When the New York artist Brock Enright agreed to kidnap me in the name of art, I reasoned that whatever psychotherapists and the New York police have had to say about his reality-altering “games”, a man with a degree from an Ivy League university could not be all that bad. Enright is currently in Britain for the opening of his first London show and I met him for a cup of tea beforehand. He wasn’t exactly personable, so already I was beginning to have my doubts. The game, he told me, had already begun. Enright’s “games” have proved so popular that a number of years ago he established a company, semagoediv (videogames backwards), through which to offer his services. Kidnapping is an incidental part of them.

He has had some 40 clients to date, and what they ask for can vary enormously. One woman he is currently working with in New York, in a game lasting several months, is trying to conquer her fear of deceit, and so, as if to inoculate her, Enright has inveigled around 25 new characters into her life, using actors. He has about 25 barmen on his books. “I’m not a therapist; I’m more like a cartoonist,” he says.

Of his kidnap subjects, some enjoy a three-day “game”, in which Enright and his team follow their movements and (subject to request, safety and various legal agreements) abduct them for around six hours before dumping them. I opted for the budget “Fantasy Photo” option, in which it was understood that the artist would stage a kidnapping and take a series of souvenir pictures. It was no picnic.

After our tea, Enright sent me off down a side street to wait. The precise form my adventure would take wasn’t clear until a Jeep careered around a corner, and figures in balaclavas jumped out and forced me into the back. I was hooded and held down. We drove a short distance and I was manhandled into what I later realised was an artist’s studio, and slammed down into the corner.

Things got nasty. Enright was shouting abuse, saying that our agreements counted for nothing and that he’d had enough of journalists. I was pulled down on to the floor and things started to rain down from above. Initially I wondered if I was being urinated on, and told him urine was fairly harmless, but impertinence like that was punished with more abuse so I shut up.

Enright agrees rest and stop signals with clients beforehand, but it wasn’t until after I had simulated masturbation with pants full of tomato ketchup, done press-ups in sweetcorn, and a shadow appeared that looked as if they were going to defecate on me, that I said enough was enough.

Afterwards, Enright transformed into quite a pussycat. “I’m really quite shy,” he said. “That was just the game.” Game or not, it leads you down peculiar alleys. Lying on the floor I had felt genuinely degraded, afraid of the next punch, ashamed that I’d submitted to it at all. Yet something like determination kept me submitting to this for a full 40 minutes. Even after a cab home and a shower I found myself oddly reluctant to talk about what had happened. The game had been a little more involving than I had envisaged. I had quite a few bruises.

Enright says that the psychological tests clients undergo before they take part weed out the frailer sorts who aren’t up to this. Kidnapping isn’t all he does, he emphasises, but his other projects seemed similarly unpleasant. They include one in which he simulates mass murders on a basketball court chalked up like a Ouija board, and another in which he acts as an internet counsellor encouraging suicide (it is worth noting that the father he hadn’t known until his late teens committed suicide four years after they met).

Does kidnapping count as art? Enright is ambivalent about the question. He calls himself a “designer” of the adventures, while a producer organises nuts and bolts. On the other hand, he says: “I created the business in the same way that I create a sculpture, but I’m using time, human beings and emotions as material to create an object. In fact, I chose the ketchup and so on for aesthetic purposes, to pay homage to other artists I respect.”

Enright wouldn’t reveal much about his London show, as it is a performance-based work and surprise is essential. He did say that there will be a bunny, a basketball covered in human faeces, a chessboard with the ghost of a player hidden inside, small sculptures relating to earlier kidnappings, videos and other documents, and most bizarrely, his own mother — who also happens to be a body-builder — in person. The poor woman has a lot to answer for.

Brock Enright is at Vilma Gold, 25b Vyner Street, London E2 (020-8981 3344) from Friday to Oct 16