Year: 2023
Medium: Mixed Media Installation
Location: 170 Forsyth StNew York, NY 10002

In 170 FORSYTH, Alexander Si turned a Lower East Side art gallery into a sales office for a fictional boutique condominium. Drawing on a mash-up of design features from twelve newly built condos in the nearby Lower East Side and Chinatown neighborhood, from glass façades and concrete/wooden finishes to unit count and pricing, the installation includes a handcrafted architectural model, bouclé-upholstered furniture, embossed branding, digital renderings, floor plans, and marketing materials. Every detail was made by hand to mimic the polished surfaces of luxury real estate while revealing the artist’s labor-intensive process.

Rather than offering actual residences, the work addresses how contemporary condo branding drives gentrification and reshapes urban identity. Si’s makeshift showroom disrupted viewer expectations in a real neighborhood under pressure from development—interrogating the aspirational aesthetics, lifestyle marketing, and cultural displacements that accompany high-end minimalism in Lower Manhattan.

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