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ABSTRACT

In the New York City downtown art scene, gallery owners and design students mix and match. Ambitious twenty-something year olds strive to make a name in the business. They intern, they will manage their social media, maybe they will even mop their floors! Juice Studios, governed by the intimidatingly powerful Mohammed Al Saud, is the dominatrix of this industry. They are in charge of all main events associated to the fine arts industry in Chelsea. No one seems to want to stop them. One evening, Juice Studios reports a theft in their gallery. Every original oil painting has been stolen and replaced by a photograph of the same painting. The police is not able to locate the thieves and the episodes continue to occur.

At the same time, Mort is a secret society that has been established at Parsons, the well-known Manhattan design school, for more than fifty years. Only the academic elite of this haven of creativity has been admitted to it. Regular students normally have never even heard the name. The organization has remained motionless for many years but continued to exist simply as a formality until Marcus, a striving photographer and student at Parsons takes control of it. It is his belief, and that of his followers, that photography should now be considered the greatest form of artistic expression. According to him, if the human race is to continue moving towards the future, technology can no longer be considered a tool but rather a part of the self.

Too Close For Comfort narrates the story of Emilia, a twenty-one year old ambitious young woman with a compelling sense of curiosity. In the double life that she leads, she will be unable to realize the coincidences between the two scenarios that she is a part of: Parsons by day and Juice Studios by night. Through the letters that Emilia writes to her sister, Ana Maria, the reader will discover the parallel plots that take place during Emilia’s last semester at Parsons; a school that she will be invited to leave, due to her involuntary involvement in a state of the art crime.