Kim Hastreiter, best known as the co-founder of the beloved Paper magazine, has spent her entire five-decade career identifying, participating in, documenting, and helping to create explosive cultural movements that began in downtown New York City and quickly spread throughout the world. She has also amassed a vast and iconoclastic collection of amazing stuff. Her new book Stuff: a New York life of cultural chaos (co-published by Amazing Unlimited and Damiani), chronicles an extraordinary slice of history and the people who defined it, using Hastreiter’s singular edit of her amazing art, fashion, design, photography, books, and ephemera as a lens.

Kim invited over 60 of her amazing artist friends, who are in her book and in her collection, to submit a piece of art that Kim loved. These artists reflect Kim’s incredibly keen eye, eclectic collection, and friendships that she’s amassed over the years. Her amazing friends in the show range in age from 27-87 years old. Some of the artists are legendary, some are deceased, and some are lesser known and have not yet been discovered. But all are great people and great artists. And all are important pieces to a historical puzzle that Hastreiter lived and documented over the past 50 years.

Kim Hastreiter has been collaborating with Jeffrey Deitch for 25 years. Ironically, their very first collaboration took place in the same Grand Street gallery that will host Hastreiter’s book launch and show on February 8. 25 years ago, on September 8, 2001 (three days before September 11, 2001), Hastreiter hosted a big, crazy happening in the same space, what she called an “Antidote to Fashion Week”, filling the gallery with lots of eccentric underground talent. There was “fashion wrestling” (glamazons in evening gowns tackling each other for prizes), turban wrapping lessons, an artist named Nelson brought a barber chair, blindfolded people, then gave them haircuts with scissors that were attached to screeching amplified electronic sounds, and that was the tip of the iceberg. The crowds were so huge, they clogged Grand Street so police intervened (just in time to hear designers threeAsfour orchestrating a theremin concert on the roof). Most gallery owners would have gone hysterical at the chaos but not Jeffrey. He loved it. And Hastreiter, a troublemaker, loved him back for that. This was the first time Kim and Jeffrey collaborated and it began a creative relationship that continued for decades.

Kim Hastreiter (b. 1951) is an artist, writer, editor, curator, and a cultural anthropologist. Born and raised in New Jersey, she attended California Institute of the Arts where she was mentored by the artist John Baldessari. After college she moved to New York City to be an artist, where she has lived and worked ever since. In 1984, she launched the legendary Paper magazine with her friend David Hershkovits, which they sold in 2017. Eight years later, Stuff is born. Hastreiter currently continues to document culture voraciously, publishing a series of Memezeens that track the radical viral art of the meme, writing a weekly Substack newsletter about the past, present, and future, bringing big creative ideas to life, writing two more books, and curating shows of meaningful artists.

About this book

I am a fanatical collector and curator of ‘stuff’, mostly stuff that I think is important, tells a good story, or just makes me swoon. Looking back, I now see that this big chaotic archive also shows the influence of the radical history, important people, and subcultural markers I’ve witnessed over the past 50 years, living as part of a maverick creative community in the greatest city on earth. It’s especially important to document ones own history and keep it truthful these days in a time when information can be so sketchy and fragile.

(Kim Hastreiter)

Stuff is a meteoric rush of wonder, sass, and cool—told in a torrent of sonic booms. I couldn’t put it down.

(Michael Stipe)

About this show

I love that it’s come full circle. Twenty-five years ago, I did my first insane ‘happening’ with Jeffrey Deitch in his Grand Street space- the same one that I am launching my book and curating this show in. I fell for Jeffrey that day in 2001 because that was when I realized he was one of the only people in the art world who truly understood that art is everywhere—not just hanging stuff on walls in museums or galleries. And this was what my practice was all about. He totally got it. Throughout the years, Jeffrey Deitch and I collaborated on many more insane cultural ‘happenings’ from art stores, to projects that hovered around fashion week, showing an outrageous hair artist from Detroit to elderly quilters from Appalachia. We even started the legendary Art Parade together. Jeffrey supported, understood, and trusted all my crazy ideas. He always said yes to what I dreamt of doing when everyone else said no. It feels so good to do this very personal launch and show with Jeffrey in his Grand Street space, which I have so much history with. I am so grateful for him.

(Kim Hastreiter)

About her amazing friends

Kim called her book Stuff but it could also have been called People. She tells you that she collects her ‘amazing friends’ with the same discernment as she collects potato-themed ceramics, crochet clown dolls, or art by big artists, like Keith Haring and Tauba Auerbach. But in carving out a radically new mode of storytelling, this 448-page tome serves as both testament and beacon, a record of collaboratively engineered creative intelligence that can guide whoever is looking to continue in its lineage. Think of it like a manual for future world-building packed with shopping recommendations, gossip, and lore.

(Whitney Mallett)

Kim is more of an artist than a collector. She is best known as a New York cultural force, but she began her career as a conceptual artist. Her collecting project can be understood as a conceptual artwork, an extension of the art of assemblage into the cultural space. It is also an ongoing storytelling project, documenting the exhilarating radical history of downtown New York from the 1970s to the present. It is a cultural crucible that Kim witnessed and helped to create.

(Jeffrey Deitch)

The most incredible combination of boundless energy, love, and taste. If you need a reason to go on, stay close to Kim. She is a life force of the highest order.

(Maira Kalman)

Kim has a great eye for new talent and treats them from the get-go as the stars they will eventually become. Her enthusiasm makes us feel like better artists than we are.

(Pedro Almodóvar)

Kim is a one-person social media. She’ll say ‘You have to meet this person!’ and is almost always right. It’s a public service, no charge. Her stuff is remnants of a life well lived. All of them have stories. Art without pretense but with lots of surprises. Like Kim, they’re connectors.

(David Byrne)

Participating artists: John Ahearn, Pedro Almodóvar, Joey Arias, Tauba Auerbach, Erik Brunetti, David Byrne, Amy Cakes, Creative Growth Artists, Tseng Kwong Chi, Alba Clemente, Francesco Clemente, Jeffrey Deitch, Phyllis Diller, Cheryl Dunn, Shepard Fairey, Ed Fella, Ron Finley, Futura, Jean-Paul Goude, Henny Garfunkel, Justin Hager, Keith Haring, Kim Hastreiter, Jim Joe, Chris Johanson, Maira Kaiman, Tibor Kalman, KAWS, Karen Kimmel, Dylan Krauss, Jeremy Liebman, Scott Lifschutz, George Lois, Rosemary Lois, Ingo Maurer, Patrick McCarthy, Steve McCurry, Geoff McFetridge, Barry McGee, Mike Mills, Marilyn Minter, Ted Muehling, Kembra Pfahler, Paige Powell, Max Rippon, Aaron Rose, Laurie Rosenwald, Kenny Scharf, Jack Shannon, Tom Shannon, Simone Shubuck, Yarrow Slaps, Stephen Sprouse, Michael Stipe, Ed Templeton, Ruben Toledo, Jim Torok, Andre Walker, Nick Waplington, John Waters, David Wojnarowicz, Lisa Yuskavage.