About 30 or so young Greenpointers lazed around Brouwerij Lane (78 Greenpoint Ave) last Thursday, drinking free craft beer from plastic cups and, time to time, gazing at pictures of cats and meme-inspired captions scrawled on canvases.
Artist Scott Chasse, creator of “OMG Webcats,” casually bearded, wearing a loose, unbuttoned shirt, popped around the room. Is there a hidden message to these trite, pop-culture images that have been art-ified?
Chasse says it’s more about the craft than any hard-to-discern message. “It’s not trying to make anyone think too hard. Yet it took a lot of thought into it to make it that way,” he said. Chasse, who lives and works in Greenpoint (he runs the Calico gallery at 67 West Street), aims to create images that impress without challenging.
“I don’t want anybody to feel as though it’s inaccessible or that you can’t understand it,” he added.
Brouwerij Lane changes the art it displays on its welcoming worn-brick walls every four to six weeks and hosted the reception to kick off Chasse’s residency. The store has hosted art openings like this for the last three years of its four-year existence.
Manager Erik Olsen was leaning against the glass-doored refrigerators of beer. “I love it,” Olsen said of the art. “It cracks me up but I’m not exactly sure why.”
Groups of people clustered around the pictures and laughed. Three guys, here for the free beer, stood near the far corner. One of them, Tim, liked a large piece that said, “OMG I butt-dialed 911.”
“I liked that one,” Tim said. “Yeah, that one had me laughing while I was getting my free beer over there.”
OMG WEBCATS Retrospective: “Then & Meow” at Brouwerij Lane thru mid-Sept.