A Reason To Go To New York

Gigi Gaston was the prototypical 60s French pop star. Her life was full of the dramas which seem to plague only the rich and famous; her Gypsy family’s escape from Bulgaria, an affair with her stepbrother, her rise and fall up the pop charts, a marriage that ended in infidelity and murder.

In 1974 Normal Mailer wrote, “Could this Black Flower with a voice like Piaf have guessed that when she bloomed into a teenage singing idol for post-war European youth, and later became the Continental fashion icon and sexy French pin-up girl on the bedroom walls of the hippest kids, that the future would strangle her dreams of normalcy, like the protagonists in one her romantically fatalistic songs? No, of course not. Because the characters of Greek tragedies are always the last to know their fates.”

The only problem? She never existed! She's the brainchild of artist Josh Gosfield who invented her entire existence. The ephemera, the stories, the persona... all fictional.

Genius, no?

*Gigi Gaston: The Black Flower will be on view October 22nd through November 25th, 2009. Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 521 W. 23rd St., New York, NY 10011.Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 to 6pm.