CLAYTON PATTERSON’S DOOR
BECOMES NEWEST ‘PORTAL’ FOR ‘13 PORTALS’ PROJECT
By Elie
in: Bowery Boogie, New York on August 19, 2013
Clayton Gallery & Outlaw Art Museum, Frontside
Check out the awesome skull painted on Clayton Patterson’s front door at 161 Essex Street. His entrance is iconic, always toting some sort of art, graffiti scrawl, or otherwise. There’s a chaotic harmony to it all. This latest piece – a perfect fit – is actually a new mural for the popular 13 Portals series already afoot around the East Village. And it’s the first that actually crossed the Mason Dixon line of East Houston.
The Clayton skull is by the hand of Portal co-commander Pérola Bonfanti, and is still in the works. Like the others, it’s interactive street art using QR code technology. The first portals were revealed last December, and new ones arrive each week this summer.
Here’s the full explanation of the artistic endeavor via the 13 Portals website: 13 Portals is an interactive street art experience to be discovered in abandoned doorways on the sidewalks of New York City’s East Village this Summer, 2013. New York based artist, Nicolina & Brazilian artist Pérola M. Bonfanti seek to unite street art, technology and alchemy in these hand painted portals.
The project welcomes and invites open participation by all. Its objective is to “pass” through the series of 13 portals beginning by scanning a unique QR code on each piece. Once the code is scanned the participant will be prompted to answer a question, or complete a task, each with escalating difficulty or complexity. Once each task is accomplished, the subsequent portal’s location is revealed, and the participant directed to it. Each portal must be visited and cracked in order, before the participant can pass through the 13th, and final portal. Once all 13 portals have been completed, the shroud of mystery behind the works will be lifted, and the 13 portals’ esoteric secrets unlocked.
