The opening last Wednesday of a ghostly art installation held in an
empty retail store in downtown Seattle, made from materials bought at
liquidation sales of other stores in downtown Seattle, started at 6:00
p.m., and not a minute before—because until then, the four blocks
surrounding the Rainier Square shopping center, where the art is
located, were blocked off by police. Somebody had robbed a bank.
Helicopters swarmed.
It felt like the whole city was a Depression-era installation that
day. The February 4, 2009, police blotter will go down as a feverish
list of desperate crimes: two bank heists (one in Wedgwood); a pet-food
store robbed at gunpoint in Capitol Hill; a soldier (the third that
week) arrested for armed mugging; a man caught prowling a parked car
who, fleeing, jumped onto I-5 and was struck by another car.
On the way to the opening, everything seemed another sign: The
welcome into downtown was a billboard whose lights had gone dark, the
Macy’s letters cast shadows that were ominous considering that the
chain announced 7,000 layoffs two days before. How could
perceptions of the art installation Retail/Commercial not be
swallowed up by this ridiculous surfeit of seemingly related current
events? Would the art survive the night?
Then came one of those new-economy moments: Inside, behind doors
whose windows had been papered over months ago (the artists retained
this touch), champagne was served and all else was forgotten.
Retail/Commercial—by Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo, the
Stranger Genius winners who go by the name Lead Pencil
Studio—felt like an open-ended series of proposals based as much
in abstraction as in the implications of its found materials.
The 4,300-square-foot former Italian men’s clothier has been divided
into three architectural sections (with some overlap). Down the
center runs a strip of discount store: bare metal shelving units,
rickety frames for price signs, a false ceiling containing fluorescent
lights and one of those black surveillance spheres. No blatant security
devices mar the upscale section, with its wooden built-in display cases
and glass shelves. The back section suggests a shop that intends to
survive on charm—jewelry cases painted hot pink dotted and
piled, ponderously, with black stones, the checkout desk blindingly
chrome. Trying for bling and Zen, it lands in the middlebrow of this
loose socio-economic triptych.
The management of the Rainier Square shopping center had hired a
doorman for the event; his name was Wade Newell. He casually
discussed the art. “Everything is familiar,” he concluded, “but the
textures are off.” 
