Lowbrow

I’m going to comment as someone who was an art resident there from May up until a few days ago. When I had first started a girl that was leaving asked if I was starting residency there that I should never stay past 9, and when I asked why she said it was because of something involving the owner but that she couldn’t say anything, but since I was a woman wanted to warn me. I took that and kept it in mind and never stayed passed 9pm. He would often get mad at me for leaving around 9-930pm. After the first two months, I started noticing strange behavior, and the people he’d invite for private dinners there were often very weird towards us women. There was a man being creepy that kept coming back and when we mentioned it made us uncomfortable he said “guys this is a part of being artists and how you get famous”. He also had a special bottle of liquor he’d keep for when he’d bring pretty petite women off the street to the back after a gallery tour to take shots. An artist (male) once took one of the shots and he got kicked out of the residency for it, again odd. He told another artist that she had to sell her painting to the collector at his house and when she asked if she could bring her boyfriend he told her no. And she thought he was joking and he was like no I’m serious why would I be joking? (She still took her bf). This was during nft nyc btw. Also during NFT NYC this year, I was showcasing at a lot of events so I wasn’t at every single one at TTBH, though I was at a lot and was painting all day for one of the days. The day I wasn’t there at all was for canal st show and BurritoDAO event at lume studios, a guy I met there when I mentioned I was doing residency at TTBH told me his gf was assaulted there, and some of her friends. Then, benzi showed up, grabbed my shoulders from behind and was bragging he got an art piece of mine, and then made eye contact with that guy that said Benzi assaulted his gf, and disappeared. So I was wanting to grab my things already just with everything else I was hearing and witnessing the last month, and then I saw this video. And this girl is very sweet and talented and shouldn’t be discredited because I’m not at all shocked by this behavior as someone who was in residency for nearly 5 months there. I’ve seen strange demeanor, but these people who don’t know each other and have the same allegations on top of what all I’ve witnessed is enough. When I grabbed all my things to take out he immediately brought this video up, asked me to step to the side as I’m leaving and kept trying to explain himself and then was telling me I’m welcome to come back and paint whenever and kept trying to ask about my current painting while I was waiting for my uber so I explained it represents yin and yang in my style happiness can’t exist without sadness and vice versa, and he was like “ so the top is the happiness and the bottom is fear, no?” And that idk. It really made me feel uncomfortable and luckily my uber finally showed up to pack my things because I was scared. I brought my ex with me to grab my things even. This is just the tip of the iceberg, there is a lot I witnessed the last two months that is why I had been wanting to find a good time to grab my things anyway. It’s just disgusting all around. Too many layers. And I’m scared for sending this but I need to because people discrediting her don’t even know how bad it is. She is a young 19 year old girl and no one deserves that