Boy-Oh-Boy

"That is a really good sculpture," Nick says, sounding awed.

"Yeah," Ry says, "and there's special symbolic stuff, too." A pause. "This shirt I borrowed from the girl who I lost my virginity to." Nick's face scrunches with laughter.

"Dude," he says finally, "we are so solid this time. We are so solid."

"Yeah," Ry says, "we are not fucking around."

IN A COUPLE HOURS THE CROWDS will arrive, the glut of hipsters, artists, collectors, whoever, doing, to quote Dennis Cooper, "what people usually do at openings: chatting nervously about anything but art." Nick's mountain will sell, Roger pulling him to the side for a hurried discussion about pricing. In the time before then, I ask Nick a few last questions.

So you've been doing this mountain for months now? What's next?

"I've been looking at how space is structured in video games. I mean I like the size of the mountain, but I don't like the time it took, the amountain of time it took, to construct. Because I like putting stuff out there and seeing what response I get. So I had this plan to, um . . . there's this tribe in Mexico, kind of near, I think it's, I can't remember where in Mexico, but they're the Huichol Indians, and they live on this island, and they dye this yarn and take all this peyote. Like when you're an adolescent, they do all this peyote to signify that they're going into manhood, and they do these crazy dyed-yarn paintings, and I want to take that and combine it with early video games, like games from '84 or '85, and the way space is constructed . . ."

He is interrupted by the phone ringing.

"Hey, Ken, what's up. Hey, you should come to my art show tonight. Uh, yeah, do you know where Chinatown is?"

"Big Trouble in Little China" continues at Black Dragon Society, 916 Chung King Road, through November 30.