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A week before the opening, the mere sight of the insanity inside the Portikus is overwhelming. Astonished, one stands in the hall that usually serves as the central exhibition space; one squeezes around a gigantic architectural model that is easily identified as a reference to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. One is blown over by a flurry of impressions. The overall shape of the model resembles a damaged ship, sitting there on a row of stacked sawhorses bearing donkey head emblems, which in turn appear on huge portrait photos of Michael Douglas. Propped up against the wall are canvases with colorful suntan lotion ads of the Bilboa brand. And then there's this sickeningly sweet smell lingering in the room, as though someone had sprayed several cans of air freshener. Is this supposed to stay that way? Mike Bouchet and Paul McCarthy return from lunch in the best of moods. "We still don't know what's it's going to look like next week," McCarthy admits, amused. "Maybe we should keep some of that stuff. The coffee cup? The folding rule?"
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