Cybersculptor Richard Dupont debuted a new body of work at Tracy Williams Ltd. in Greenwich Village last Wednesday night, previewing his forthcoming installation of figures at Aby Rosen’s Lever House scheduled for next February. Present were Dupe’s rat pack of male friends, who quickly began to resemble the weird fleshy homunculi in the show: Teutonic New Yorker writer Nick Paumgarten, pale Malcolm Morley look-alike John Newsom, newly humble curator David Hunt, wolfencritic Adam Mendelsohn, standup comedian, er, painter Will Cotton, and printers to the stars Greg Burnett and Alex Heinrici.

A few attendees tried surreptitiously to lift a figure from a pile of nude resin thingees resembling "toys by Spencer Tunick," but found them glued together. Shucks! Upstairs, Dupe’s new figures included an Aztec war god, an Easter Island everyman and a ripped form resembling the monster from Alien. Unoriginally, John Newsom described the exhibit as The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Tall blonde beauty Tracy Williams and the artist’s bride, famed socialite Lauren Dupont, did not appear to be under the spell of some mad scientist, although the males in the crowd were not so lucky after consuming copious flagons of wine in the cellar of Tailor, a club on Broome Street, where the after party was held.

Most interesting of Dupe’s new work are drawings of intermixing figures modeled on the artist, which give a clue to the Lever House installation, in which life-sized nude figures of Dupont will interact like commuters on Park Avenue. The resemblance to Giacometti in these drawings is strong, subtle and not unflattering. They open the possibility that Richard Dupont will transcend the gimmicky limits of his chosen means of reproduction and, next February, produce a masterpiece.

Richard Dupont, Nov. 7-Dec. 22, 2007, at Tracy Williams Ltd., 313 West 4th Street, New York, N.Y. 10014

CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).