Remember the Neville Wakefield-curated “Commercial Break” show during the Venice Biennale, which promised to bring a program of cutting-edge art video to an equally cutting-edge barge in the middle of the Grand Canal? You can be forgiven if you don’t, because “Commercial Break” didn’t exactly actually, you know, “happen.” Now it will, though!
Much hyped in Venice, the art boat was prevented from launching due to disputes over permits (or something) and the lavish video-art program — featuring everything from classic works by the likes of Barbara Kruger and Tony Oursler to Richard Phillips’s filmic ode to Lindsay Lohan — was only seen at superstar socialite Dasha Zhukova’s Venice party, where it could have been easily missed amid the out-of-control swarm of glitterati that mobbed the event.
Well, now art fans get another chance to see the event — in Brooklyn. An alley in Greenpoint, to be precise, where the “Commercial Break” program of videos will make its new public debut during the upcoming Bring to Light: Nuit Blanche New York festival. A press release that has just arrived in IN THE AIR’s inbox sets the stage thusly, “Down a narrow alley, past a projection of Jeremy Blake’s last film, through billowing white mists: there, on a billboard-sized LED screen in a private pocket of the Greenpoint waterfront, Neville Wakefield’s Commercial Break will debut on Saturday, October 1 (sunset to midnight).” We trust they have their permits in order this time….
Check out the trailer for the aborted Venice event, below, to see what awaits you through the mist in that very special Brooklyn alley:

