Willem Dafoe: Addictive Art

Willem Dafoe and longtime girlfriend Elizabeth LeCompte bought the controversial wall hanging from underground artist Tom Fruin, 27, who found the baggies in a Brooklyn housing project. Fruin sewed together hundreds of glassine drug packets to make a shimmering tapestry called "Sediment: (Alfred E. Smith Housing Project)." Dafoe was among the art world insiders who snapped up Fruin's pieces before his new exhibition, "Cultural Narcotics: The Straight Dope," opened to a packed house at the Stephan Stux Gallery in Chelsea Saturday night.

"When Willem Dafoe and Liz LeCompte came over, Willem was standing in front of my work, giggling, like he felt he was being a real bad boy buying some of it," Fruin told Webster Hall curator Baird Jones at the opening. Dafoe confirmed the purchase in a statement made to Page Six, saying "Tom Fruin is an up-and-coming young artist whose work I'm happy to support."

"I don't know why the police don't arrive and just cuff us all," Fruin quipped during the exhibit. "I guess they could arrest Willem Dafoe for conspiracy to distribute and possession right now also. It's weird, too, because I've shipped these drugs overseas and there's been no problem." Gallery owner and namesake, Stephan Stux, adamantly defended the exhibit, suggesting that he and his staff would be more than willing to go to jail in exchange for the chance to be a part of art history, while making a seemingly profound political statement about freedom of expression.