Home Nightlife Drag Coefficient.

Drag Coefficient.

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Photography by Aracelis Batista.

Overheard outside of Gramercy Park’s National Arts Club:

“Honey! I almost wore the exact same thing!”

“Impossible. You know everything I wear is from Goodwill and Home Depot.”

So said a pair of exquisitely clad Amazonian drag queens in front of the century-old Samuel J. Tilden House. The occasion for the festivities was Jeremy Kost’s “The Ladies That Lunch,” a sexual pastiche of old-world high society and modern downtown liberation. While the presented work was certainly noteworthy in its own right, the real achievement was the creation of a party that functioned as something of a living addition to the collection on display. Neat trick, that.

Lately it feels like people are more interested in mashups of existing works than totally new creations (see also: DJ EarwormPride and Prejudice and Zombies). Kost’s photography does this trick correctly by bringing together two disparate elements that create a new entity that is entirely unique, yet simultaneously commenting on the parts that made it a whole. In this case, the contrast is made by placing seemingly well-heeled (no pun intended) drag queens in the context of what appears to be an Upper East Side late afternoon luncheon.

Jeremy Kost and his 'girls.'
Eric Shiner,Richie Rich and Jun Nakayama.
Girls will be 'girls.'

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