Adept at making the most ordinary, industrial materials into striking statements about collective cultural values – such as bathroom counters and vinyl siding taken thrillingly out of context – Charles Harlan is taking over avant-garde, Upper East Side hotspot Venus Over Manhattan (a geographical paradox, if ever there was one), where visitors will be greeted by a ten-foot, roll-down gate, before being forced to navigate a claustrophobic passageway formed from an ‘endless wall of corrugated steel’, as Harlan puts it. Together, they’ll form an urban environment gone ominously awry.
