Naked model Natalie White, who last week charmed cops with her nakedness, apparently didn't have quite the same effect on ROX Gallery's landlord: A window installation, in which Natalie's naked torso was broadcast to the world outside 86 Delancey Street, was on Sunday covered up with creatively placed "caution" signs at the behest of building management. (Art lovers should scroll down for NSFW version.)
"[The landlord] pretty much said we'd have to terminate the lease if we didn't do something about the window," said Emerald Fitzgerald, the gallery's director, who found the caution signs lying around the space and thought they'd make for suitable cover-ups. "It looks great—I'm really happy with it," she told us, adding that she's more concerned with what's inside, anyway. "There's really a lot of valuable pieces inside the gallery that are fantastic. It's not really about the window."
White's acceptance of the signs was significantly more grudging. "We were asked to censor the images, and I said 'No way. I don’t censor myself,'" she said. But White eventually capitulated on the basis that she'd sooner cover the offending image—namely, a full-frontal glimpse of her vagina—than cancel the whole show.
"I didn’t do it because I felt obliged to the community," White said. "We did it so the gallery wouldn't have to be closed. We decided what we were doing was a much bigger picture."
The show will run through May 18, but White also wants to set the record straight about what exactly goes on in the exhibit, which, according to the Post, includes "the live masturbation shows that are an occasional part of her act."
"There is no live masturbation going on the gallery whatsoever," an exasperated White told us this morning. "I don’t even masturbate at home!"
Via ROX Gallery
White said the mix-up likely stemmed from one of the show's installations, a giant double-exposed Polaroid that depicts White "making love to herself," in which she uses a timer to take a photo of herself in one position, and then, rather than removing the film, takes another shot of in a different position—thereby creating the illusion that she is, in fact, making love to herself. "I can see the confusion," she admits.
"But those are the photographs that I do of my art. I do not go around to art galleries masturbating," she said. "I’m bold, but I’m not that bold."
