New York flotsam, but make it art

By Vittoria Benzine

Pigeon (photo by Natalia Tirado)

Last Friday night, a giant sculpture of an inflatable pigeon beckoned partygoers into “A Beautiful Chaos,” the debut art show by Eugene Serebrennikov and Vicente Morillo, who work together under the moniker Another Day. The exhibit is a hipster hypebeast extravaganza suited to the sleek Williamsburg loft they’ve rented to host it. Psychedelic street signs tower over the entry, and further spectacles await within, like an incandescent park bench, a golden trashcan, a massive parking ticket and a foot-tall Yankees cap. Everything at “A Beautiful Chaos” is over the top. It’s a giant ode to all of New York, from the city’s filthy frenzy to its magic mania. Opening night thrummed with a DJ and crowds of Brooklyn’s top artists.

Morillo declared the whole affair “beautiful,” down to the last attendee. “It’s people I consider family, friends, random people that I never met before,” he told Brooklyn Magazine on opening night. “They fit perfectly with the concept, with the way we understand the beautiful chaos.”

Serebrennikov says that it was Morillo who first uttered those words, “beautiful chaos,” which immediately became the genesis of this exhibit. “As soon as he said those words two years ago, we went off on a tangent, trying to figure out how to highlight the beauty in the chaos of New York,” adds Serebrennikov. “Because it’s even deeper than that. It’s not just New York. Beautiful chaos is life.”

Serebrennikov and Morillo first met about a decade ago. Serebrennikov, who served as Nike Basketball’s art director in Portland, discovered Morillo’s work while sourcing artists to do a project for Kobe Bryant. Not only did Srebrennikov like Morillo’s art style, he also liked his style of working. Morillo was based in Spain and didn’t speak English at the time. The two kept collaborating, though, trading sketches remotely and sharing discussions over Google translate. In 2017, they made the leap, and each moved to New York, where they founded their creative agency Burn & Broad, which has done projects for Mountain Dew, Cardi B and more.

‘Big Dreams’ by Another Day

Another Day, the duo’s side-hustle art studio, took shape in 2019. “When you design for clients, you work in a box,” Serebrennikov says. “Our art studio is our creative playground.” A number of works in “A Beautiful Chaos” echo their professional projects — two tapestries on view resemble their collaboration with Boundless Rugs in 2020, for instance. Here, however, these tapestries recontextualize everyday iconography including traffic cones and construction signs within the visual tradition of the moneyed nobility’s woven wall coverings.

A film titled “A Beautiful Chaos” anchors it all. The 13-minute feature, also on YouTube, plays on a loop up the mezzanine’s stairs. It’s an acid trip of high speed taxi races, visual gags and cameos from iconic graffiti writers like PAR. Mock movie posters line the surrounding walls, featuring lead characters Pigeon and Rat, who face off as vivid sculptures on the first floor.

Mock movie posters by Another Day (photo by Natalia Tirado)

Across film, sculpture, textiles and good old-fashioned painting, “A Beautiful Chaos” interweaves mediums so technically diverse they’d take any artist — even two — years to master. Fortunately, Serebrennikov and Morillo know how to outsource. The pair hired the same embroidery expert from their Boundless project to oversee the tapestries and Yankees cap for their show. The skills are the same, but the design directives are different. What’s more, Serebrennikov and Morillo keep their collaborators genuinely close. At opening night, for example, was Riley, the founder of Bushwick-based Arena Embroidery, who has created costumes for Drake. Riley brought Twiggy Moore, a rising designer who helped with his work for this show. They both mingled with Isabel Ewing, a classic Bushwick-based street artist they’d met that night.

Co-founders of Another Day studio Vicente Morillo, left, and Eugene Serebrennikov (photo by Jacob.Consenstein)

“A Beautiful Chaos” remains on view through October 27. Although the DJ’s gone, they’ve still got t-shirts to take home in pizza boxes, and free catalogs available in the form of lightweight newspapers. Normally you have to pay for exhibition catalogs, and normally they’re really heavy to carry. Rather than playing the traditional art world game, Serebrennikov and Morillo are embracing a newer paradigm as Another Day. They’re certainly not the first artists to rent an empty commercial space in Williamsburg and throw their own art show there, without seeking gallery representation. All the works on view are for sale, and they don’t have to split the profits. It goes to show that when new artists have vision and a network of real friends, they don’t need the seal of an art dealer’s name.

As such, “A Beautiful Chaos” is intended for everyone, from New Yorkers to out-of-towners and from art aficionados to amateurs. The most beautiful chaos, after all, is the combining of worlds.

‘It’s a Sign’ by Another Day

“A Beautiful Chaos” is on view at 119 N 1st Street in Williamsburg until October 27. Admission is free. The hours are Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday noon to 7 p.m.