Mind blowing must-go event? Could be! Art as a natural high.. ======================================================== CALLING ALL PRESS – EXCLUSIVE PRESS INVITE ONLY RON BASS presents THE SUBSTANCE at 640 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York NY 10012 THURSDAY NOVEMBER 21st – 6.00pm – 11.00pm ***ALL PRESS MUST BE AT THE VENUE AT 7.15PM TO WITNESS A VERY SPECIAL EXHIBIT “THE REVEAL” *** Visual artist, RON BASS welcomes you to his world. “The Substance” an intoxicating, stimulating, fantasy experience designed to push your senses and mind to the limit. The Substance is a natural high, zigzagging through an artistic and colorful path, oozing with empowering, bold, and eye-popping installments spread generously over a two floor intimate setting. Six installations will be showcased exclusively to press, which will feature pieces from the Bass (ˈbās) by Ron Bass Holiday 13' Clothing Collection, custom artwork and live, installations by Ron Bass. Witness a very special live exhibit with a powerful message entitled “The Reveal” at 7.15pm. With a distinct love for DIY (Do It Yourself), Pop Art and Fashion, Bass has created pieces inspired by many but his core inspiration draws from the work of legends such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Mark McNairy and Jeremy Scott. Bass’ latest work has made its way to the likes of Jay-Z, Beyonce, Swizz Beatz, Rita Ora and Victoria Secret Model, Cara D to name a few. His goal is to one-day leave a mark on art and fashion culture by showcasing love for thyself and others while creating pieces that will inspire the masses. It’s not for the faint hearted; you have been warned…come and enjoy The Substance, an artistic overdose, use at your own risk! For more information on RON BASS please visit: www.iamronbass.com www.instagram.com/iam_ronbass FOR ALL PRESS INQUIRIES + RSVPs please contact Funky Dumpling PR / Ph: 917.519.6006 Catherine@funkydumpling.com About Funky Dumpling PR Funky Dumpling PR is an independent, international music and lifestyle public relations firm based in New York City in 2003. For over a decade, Funky Dumpling has been successfully promoting artists such as: DJ Tiësto, DJ Krush, Groove Armada, James Lavelle, Danny Howells, Victor Calderone, Deep Dish, Don Diablo and Louie Vega (Masters at Work); as well as events for: Armani Exchange, Amsterdam Dance Event, and Tommy Boy Records. Funky Dumpling works with all forms of media: print, broadcast, online, and radio to attain maximum market reach for their clients. The staff has decades of combined experience and knowledge of both niche and mainstream media opportunities. For more information, please visit: www.funkydumpling.com ======================================================= We talked with Ron Bass, who explained that he has created The Substance as a response to his generation's (he is 29) experience with drugs and alcohol which reflects how misguided kids are too easy to manipulate and this event/exhibition/performance will offer himself as the drug - "I have created The Substance so that I will be the drug that night a bunch of art works intended to be mind boggling illusions involving costumes and painted constructions entirely lit by black light over two floors of the building. A TV set is covered with paint that glows so that it seems to be on even though it is not plugged in to the wall All natural lights for the mind so that people can get high! I have never taken drugs myself. I lost my parents at 19 - my mum - and 22 - my dad who left for North Carolina died, so now I express myself in art, and a lot of people in the celebrity world have supported me, art that may not be expressing myself within not crying too much, but to get it out as a first thought. I rarely paint on canvas I paint TVs beds - canvas has already been done. Fluorescent colors before this show. Black light for this show, a rustic anti art vibe, science for fantasy of the mind, a two floor installation of artwork at Lafayette and Broadway. I have designed bottled soda for a company to cascade with black light and react with it. It's to get out there with an overview who I am and what to expect with new artwork and I have a custom clothing line - hats T-shirts jackets at first and now this is a debut for more new stuff bigger and better round the country. There will be models and a chef wearing the clothes. The chef is from a TV show on Bravo who will be in the fashion show presentation I call it Bass by Ron Bass. Love and color in art there are 7 models in clothes made of leather which react to the black light. It expresses the empowerment of women you see the shape of the body in underwear and the skin is painted with black latex paint and helmets, things that normally don't go together. A whole flow of many things to make The Substance. I am creating a fantasy world like Willy Wonka created the Chocolate Factory! The skin paint is breathable for the models-- it's not a torturous thing! We have been sending out and shopping all week, see the web site. There will be seven models in the fashion show and four models in latex paint. It all expresses my appreciation for women's bodies and how powerful women are- a showcase where they stand out the most, the power I saw in my mother. My parents were African Americans from South Carolina, my Dad was a taxi driver who came here in his 20s and met my mother, typical love story, and they had me, but in the end they didn't see eye to eye and he went back to North Carolina, and he died when I was 22. But he kept in touch and we had a wonderful relationship." Now he says he pays tribute to "my mother as a loving responsible woman." ================================================ YES we'll go - to see the girl in the black light bubble bath (police tape barring the open door!) - along with rapper Ice-T, supermodel Tyson Beckford, five time Grammy winner (30 million sales!) rapper singer songwriter rapper producer dancer actress Missy Elliott, NY Knicks Kenyon Martin, salsa prince Frankie Negron, trainer designer Alex Nash, HBO star Michael Williams, undefeated Brooklyn boxer Frank Galarza - Party! ============================================= HOW IT TURNED OUT With its polished floors and white walls bare of all furniture except the black light glo painted bicycles (two), throne and TV set, and banners hung and painted in Ron Bass's vibrant, Keith Haring graffiti-style outline figures and sketch messages, the apartment Ron Bass had borrowed above the Swatch store was transformed into a high end gallery when we visited early for a personal tour by the tall, quietly irrepressible host, who like Catherine the high energy publicity person accompanying us with her flashing diamondlike bracelet and bronze highlights was a shadowy figure in the black light darkness aside from their eye whites, teeth and her jewelry or his T shirt logo (see pics). Apart from the rainbow glowing artwork which in the preview context gave a cool, upmarket impression of Guggenheim level significance and price, despite its simplicity of construction and message, it was hard to see him or the dark ghost like figures of the latex painted models in the Stygian gloom except when lit up in the room where they were painting themselves - "Oh you can't publish that!" exclaimed Catherine when we took a shot - with what looked like shiny tar. All of it gave off an air of calm contemplation equal to the Gugghenheim's recent hit exhibition of James Turrell, whose working of natural and artificial light had a more calming effect on the Guggenheim crowd than Prozac, with many attendees lying together on the wall bench or even flat on the floor in the Rotunda watching the slow soft play of changing colors in the ceiling above. Sadly this feeling of energy amid calm and depth was lost in the fray later when the lengthy apartment was packed wall to wall with good looking invitees (proving once again that the African American society of New York City can turn out more handsome and stylishly suited beaus with warmer personalities and more buxom and dynamic pulchitrude by their side than any other) If so it was a pity since Bass's event was a self presentation as an artist and designer as well as his latest work - in fact its high point The Reveal which happened at 7.15pm as notified above consisted of four figures in black declaiming one after the other "I am Ron Bass!" followed by Ron himself pronouncing the same words to the accompaniment of yells and shrieks from the females in the audience jammed into the darkened room most of whom were holding phones aloft to capture a scene which no one more than six feet away could actually see. All this after we reentered the fourth floor apartment above the Swatch shop along with a line that stretched round the corner of Broadway and Bleecker. Upstairs we moved along past the dark silhouette of a naked seeming (black paint over skin and underwear, in fact) female figure in a space helmet offering shreds of some snack from a tray with a notice DONT TAKE THE MOLLY or similar, past the bicycles and past the Throne and the DayGlo TV which were no longer cool and spacey in the quiet calm of the empty rooms of the preview but taken over by the excitement of the crowd moving slowly towards the room of the Reveal, so that even the bed with two dark voluptuous shadows of space helmeted females lying on it or the pseudo naked dark and mute Martian female confronting us silently in the middle of that room could not make their (presumably) intended impression of visitors from another realm of the universe against the conversation and party atmosphere which came in the way, so we are not sure that it might not have been better for Ron to have had a showing all day without the clamor and distraction which now more than matched them, before his climactic theater in the evening. Even though using a flash instantly erased the otherworldly air we couldn't help but take a few photographs to record for posterity what was actually happening on the bed (nothing) and as well the distinguished guests we met in the packed room at the end. Bobby Beckles the stunt man was present, with his friend Racine Rustill the actress, he wearing possibly the nattiest grey suit we have ever seen, Ron's tall and very cool brother Revels was there with Madisin, sassy real estate star Nicole Rothstein also with bronzed highlights ("Are you going to take pictures of me all night?"), and The Deacon, leader of the punk band with possibly the finest name ever, Mother's Dirty Lil' Secret, who agreed that one should only consort with positive people. We compared negative people with heavy sacks that had to be thrown off the plane before it could rise and fly after it raced down the runway. "Yeah that's good," he said. Also present was the personable real estate consultant/organizer Greg Lindsay who had come down from his apartment upstairs. He said it was three times the size of his previous apartment, and when he had moved he had got the immediate benefit of being seen as a "minimalist" in his decor, without actually doing any more. Our chat was finally interrupted by the "I am Rob Bass" performance, which ended with Ron making a short Thank you speech. "Some people wanted to hold me back" in the beginning, he said, reporting what he should now realize is a very common phenomenon of creative people being told by their friends and acquaintances that they will never succeed because their ideas are too far out. (Yeah!" called out The Deacon in sympathy). So tonight seeing so many people turn up to support him he said he was very moved. "Did you get that?" said a pretty girl. "He was emotional about all these people showing up and supporting him. That was cool".