A Young Artist Who Mostly Draws Attention

"My point is to bring substance back," Yazmany Arboleda says of his controversial exhibit. (Courtesy Of The Artist)

"I called some friends and ran it by them and they said, 'Uh, it might be in bad taste, but let us think about it.' " Those friends, and many others, eventually helped with a project that Arboleda divided into six different phases.

"We make jokes about how he turns us into his work force," says freelance Web designer and former college roommate Mark Bush. "I don't know how he did it, but he'd have us in his office working on this till 5 in the morning. He's got that kind of enthusiasm."

For the first phase, Arboleda needed a gallery in Chelsea to display "Assassination," with the intention of having it promptly shut down by authorities. The problem: No gallery in Chelsea would display his art, though not because they found it offensive. "They said, 'We discover our artists, they don't come to us,' " Arboleda says.

Not one for waiting, Arboleda and his friends went online and invented two galleries, purportedly in Chelsea, purportedly exhibiting his "Assassination" show. Viewing at these fictitious venues was said to be by appointment only. Anyone who phoned or e-mailed received a callback from Arboleda, who dolefully explained that the show had been closed down.

Inevitably, this led to publicity. Michael Musto mentioned the show in the Village Voice, implying that he liked the outrageousness of the art, and Martin Peretz blogged about it for the New Republic, implying that he didn't. Arboleda was profiled in the Miami Herald with the headline "Artist Makes a Big Leap."

But that pales compared with the ink and pixels generated by the two-day rental at 264 W. 40th. Arboleda said he was a little surprised by the vehemence of the reaction, in part because the idea of the show had been run through the media machine already, even if it had never actually been seen by the public. He's received some death threats, of course.

But yesterday, the guy looked exhilarated, like he'd just pulled off some impossible triple flip in the pike position. This is a town crammed with artists, and most of them wait years to get a single mention in the press. A tiny fraction ever mount a show that earns widespread attention. As Arboleda readied for an on-camera interview with Channel 9 late yesterday afternoon, his friends were lugging in beer for the after party.