GOTHAM ART & THEATER
by Elisabeth Kley



Miss Havisham’s ghost has plenty of room to dance in Virgil Marti’s ghoulishly opulent show at Elizabeth Dee on West 20th Street in Manhattan. Marti (b. 1962) is famous for minimal but kitschy allegorical installations using things like mirrored Mylar and colored plastic animal horns; here, he's presenting an over-the-top environment that’s up-to-the minute and spare, while at the same time enfolding multiple layers of recollection: a 21st-century look back to an ersatz 1970s version of Baroque grotesque decoration, by way of the Victorian obsession with mourning and death.

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