The brat green of summer is beginning to show its fall colors. In New Windsor, New York on Thursday, shades of yellow and red could be seen streaking through the foliage of Storm King Art Center as the sculpture park welcomed a few hundred lucky guests. Their business there: to hear brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, a new album of remixes by the British pop singer Charli XCX, ahead of its Friday release.
“It’s so beautiful and autumn-y—fall, as you call it,” Charli noted cheekily to attendees while taking in the scenery.
Founded in 1960, Storm King boasts a reputation as an idyllic fall day trip destination for New Yorkers. Located in the Hudson Valley, it is home to a robust collection of large-scale modern sculpture. Highlights include works by Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero, Isamu Noguchi, and Maya Lin.
For Thursday’s listening party, a new monument was erected: a giant, L-shaped wall in the acidic shade of chartreuse featured on the cover of Charli XCX’s sixth studio album, brat. (The color, which took hold of popular culture this summer through an endless font of memes, was also sported by many members of the audience.)
Appearing on a small stage nestled in the corner of the L, Charli played a selection of brat remixes off her phone, which was connected to the sound system via aux cord—in keeping with brat’s self-consciously lo-fi aesthetic. Track titles from the album were printed in mirror-image text on the wall above her; Alice Aycock’s tiered tower sculpture Three-Fold Manifestation II (1987) loomed behind the audience. “We’re fine art bitches now,” Charli declared shortly after taking the stage, an apparent deep-cut reference to her 2008 song “Art Bitch.”
Ahead of Charli’s arrival, attendees were treated to brat green cocktails and custom merch made for the event: t-shirts printed with “art” on the front and “charli xcx at storm king” on the back in backwards text. The event’s highly coveted tickets were distributed to select fans who applied online. For some, the pop star’s appearance was the impetus for their first-ever visit to Storm King. Among them was Kailey Leturia, who came from the nearby village of Washingtonville with friends after receiving admission confirmation: “I had no idea this was here,” she said of the museum.
Others tried their luck and made their way into the event without confirmed entry. Among them was Ana Maria Delmar, who drove from Westchester, New York with a friend. Delmar, who recently completed a master’s degree in curation at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, called the impact of brat on visual culture “huge”: “It’s made things a bit more kitschy. And people are embracing—I don’t want to call it lowbrow culture, but things don’t have to be completely produced or perfect to be interesting.”
