The Loving Spoonful

FANFAIR

PERFORMANCE ARTISTS FISCHERSPOONER LADLE OUT SURPRISE

As pop sensations go, Fischerspooner stands out as one of the more bizarre. Immersed in the trappings of 80s kitsch, prop stylist Casey Spooner and commercial director Warren Fischer have come up with a highly contrived song-and-dance spectacular that challenges conventional description. Part Paula Abdul, part Star Trek, with a touch of Bedazzled and Busby Berkeley, the duo—along with a consort of dancers, makeup artists, and trunks full of fancy dress—have wooed New York audiences with deliberately disordered performances I that celebrate the cliches of prefabricated entertainment. Bom two years ago in an East Village Starbucks, FS has evolved into an art-fashion phenomenon, thanks in part to Gavin Brown, in ' whose West 15th Street gallery-cum-bar they periodically perform. “There isn’t an aesthetic or intellectual agenda,” says Spooner. “It’s just the opportunity to fetishize anything that excites us by indulging in it, smart or not.” In early February the pair will take their show to Los Angeles for a several-night engagement in a disused downtown bank building that will become Andre Balazs’s new Standard hotel. Co-produced by curator Yvonne Force, FS plans to invoke the baroque fireworks-and-mythology displays of 18th-century Europe. “We’ll be exploring the ideas of violence, splendor, and spectacle,” says Fischer. “It’s going to be by far the most elaborate show we’ve ever staged.”

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