This has captured our attention, and will not let go. Why?  Maybe it is because the artist’s name (but definitely not his work) is identical to that of another non-mainstream artist who, according to the most widely used search engines, is alot more well-known.  But that cannot be all there is to it. For some it could be the strong memory of Grand Central Station and the seeming incongruity of its use as a stage, even on the occasion of a birthday party.  For others it may be as simple as a question.  What are those costumes?  A post in on the New Yorker‘s website explains:

…Cave, who was born in Missouri, in 1959, and is based in Chicago, where he serves as director of the Art Institute’s graduate fashion program, has been producing Soundsuits—which can be displayed as inert sculptures, or can be worn, often by their creator, “activated” to produce a variety of noises—for nearly twenty years. He has made Soundsuits from an array of found materials including dryer lint, sequins, sweaters, socks, buttons, feathers, human hair, and vintage toys. His first Soundsuit was made of twigs, in reaction to the beating of Rodney King.

The suits can be elegant, goofy, sexy, funny, lovely, scary, weird, and creepy, but they are generally crowd-pleasing, and this, over decades of continuous production, has earned them disapproval from some corners of the art world. Sometimes they look like ceremonial tribal attire, sometimes like haute couture, sometimes like modernist abstractions sprung to life, sometimes like creatures from the minds of Jim Henson, Dr. Seuss, and Maurice Sendak, mid-rumpus. They have been featured in a Vogue September Issue photo spread. The “Heard” Soundsuits are made up of two parts, with one dancer in each part: the classic cartoon split of horse’s head and horse’s rump.

“In the main terminal of Grand Central, it’s a dance in itself, especially if you’re standing up above, looking down,” Cave told me on the phone, a few days into the performance’s run, his voice accented with a lingering, honeyed drawl. “It’s an interesting network, an interesting dance, an interesting movement piece within itself. I find that to be very poetic, and was really responding to that.”

During college, Cave studied dance at an Ailey-run program in Kansas City, and the artist seemed most pleased by the young dancers’ engagement with the performance. “The kids are amazing,” Cave said. “And that’s really, really what it’s about—the kids bringing us back to this sort of dream state. That’s what stimulates us as human beings, and keeps us moving and thinking about ourselves. And as the piece progressed, they just have become more and more horse-like.”

Read the entire story here.