Opinion
CJ Hendry’s recent Flower Market installation, initially planned for September 13-15 on Roosevelt Island, was shut down by police due to overcrowding and quickly relocated to Brooklyn. The event was both a celebration and a symptom of our evolving art world. Hendry, known for her hyperrealistic drawings of everyday objects and her massive Instagram following of over 800k, collaborated with beauty brand Clé de Peau Beauté to pair their perfume scents with plush flower sculptures. Visitors could take one flower for free and buy additional ones for $5 each, creating Instagrammable bouquets to share with friends.
Though the event was billed as a moment of tranquil perfume, it reminded me more of the Amorphophallus titanum (corpse flower) blooming at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in 2006—Hendry’s show is conceptually sweet but sickeningly commercial in its true intention of generating buzz. I kept asking myself, why all the excitement around Hendry’s installation of 100,000 plush flowers? Was it fueled by its high-production quality, a slow media cycle, or our culture’s obsession with social media-driven photo-op moments?
Do these moments blur the line between art events and publicity stunts, or is it just our consumption of them through media that raises my question: Does the contemporary art world revolve around a series of high-production events engineered for maximum exposure through carefully crafted chaos? The shift in contemporary art—from human craft to fabrication studios to corporate spectacle—has erased the line between art and brand production.
Hendry’s Flower Market, along with the excitement and chaos it created, taps into a deeper reality about art in the Instagram age. An immersive exhibition like this can stir public excitement but can be shut down within hours due to overcrowding, reflecting how art has become more about shareability than contemplation.
These kinds of “art experiences,” which museums, blue-chip galleries, and corporate brands increasingly crave, teeter on the edge of spectacle. Even the police shutdown on the first day feels like part of the event’s narrative—a moment that adds to its mythology, much like the recent 2022 group show at O’Flaherty’s with an estimated 1,000 people in attendance, police in the street, and gallery owner Jamian Juliano-Villani shouting at the crowd through a megaphone, “Thank you, go home.”
Hendry, who I first discovered on Instagram, is known for her skilled hyperrealist drawings, a medium whose behind-the-scenes process videos are algorithmic gold. While her work is evolving into installations, it’s clear that her skill at working the media rivals her technical draftsmanship. The Instagram reel she posted on September 14th, apologizing for the shutdown and promising a new venue, felt more like a polished PR move—turning disruption into more publicity.
Of course, Hendry’s Flower Market isn’t the first example of art merging with spectacle. It follows a lineage of work combining extreme production value with showmanship—like Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God, a diamond-encrusted skull that reportedly cost £15 million to create, which sold for £50 million in 2007 to a group of investors, rumored to include Hirst himself. Similarly, Jeff Koons’ 2024 sculptures sent into space and Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms are designed to create awe-inspiring experiences, while half the fun is virtue-signaling with a selfie in the long line just to get in.
These works draw viewers in with promises of intimate, reflective experiences—an all-inclusive transcendentalism in environments produced for mass consumption and viral moments. In contemporary art’s long history, from cubism to op art to conceptualism, each era has pushed the boundaries of form. Optical art, popular in the 1960s, used geometric patterns to create visual illusions. The zombie formalism fad (2011-2015) was a throwback to op art. While formalism focuses on the purity of form and how visual elements function within a composition, op art’s primary goal was to manipulate the viewer’s perception, creating dynamic visual experiences rather than emphasizing form for its own sake. Thus, the evolution into “photo-op art”—work designed for social media attention—makes perfect sense.
Some artists, like Devon Rodriguez, attempt to transition from Instagram fame to art-world influence, facing backlash for their efforts—Rodriguez famously had a public spat with Artnet writer Ben Davis after criticism of his work. Others, like Leah Schrager, travel in reverse from artist to influencer. Schrager began in 2015 with the question of how to make celebrity a part of her art practice, posing as an Instagram model and gaining over 5.3 million followers by playing with the roles of artist and sex worker. She raises provocative questions about performance and authenticity. At what point does the role an artist plays—whether as Schrager’s sex worker persona or Hendry’s installation artist—become indistinguishable from reality?
Returning to Flower Market, it’s clear that Hendry has tapped into something resonant: the public’s desire for immersive, accessible, and shareable art. The plush flowers, which visitors curate (and I use that term in its sloppiest, Instagrammable sense) into small bouquets, represent the intersection of high production and accessibility.
As an artist myself, I’m familiar with the concept of using plants as spectacle. In 2021, I created a large vine installation for the Spring/Break Art Show, an indie art fair known for its edgy DIY vibes and immersive installations. In my work, each leaf was handmade, cut out by me late at night between writing about art and caring for my baby. Perhaps that’s why Hendry’s piece fascinates me—not just for its spectacle, but because I wonder: who made all those 100,000 flowers? For me, the exhibition’s greatest success was a photo of a viewer surrounded by my work, staring at it in awe. The image brought me so much joy I wondered if I should be making artwork or selling acid.
Since the launch of Spring/Break in 2012, just as Facebook bought Instagram, I’ve witnessed firsthand the market’s shift toward these immersive, all-encompassing art environments. Why, in this cultural moment, does everything need to be wallpapered, wrapped in production, and designed for instant consumption? Perhaps it’s because, in a world of constant churn, where cultural capital is measured in likes and shares, art has become just another commodity crafted for maximum reach.
In the evolution of art history, what Hendry and others are doing is less about cheapening art and more about redefining what it means to experience it. Like Thomas Kinkade said, “Somebody loves this stuff. The same question they asked about Elvis can be asked about me: Can 20 million people be wrong?” Perhaps these cultural corpse flowers are just blooming more and more often. The “stink” of these new works is exactly what makes them attractive to pollinators—their virality becomes a shared cultural experience, easily accessible and just as easily discarded.
Yes, the corpse flower blooms brightly and attracts crowds, but the occasional daisy might also manage to peek through the New York City pavement. That moment—assuming it’s not trampled by the public on their way to another branded event—will be a magical, personal experience for the select few who catch it.
About the writer: Jac Lahav is an artist, writer, and curator. He has written for Artspiel, Two Coats of Paint and the CT Examiner. His artwork has been exhibited in museums across the country and is currently on view at the Jewish Museum NY.