Category Archives: gallery

The Spread of Gallery Hopping

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It’s snowing outside in Manhattan, which makes one want to curl up with a hot cup of tea rather than trudge outside to galleries. Sure, all I have to do is take the subway, but sometimes that seems like a lot of effort. Nowadays, I don’t have to go far though. Galleries have been mushrooming outside my apartment almost as much as trendy boutiques. The explosion of galleries has been pleasant to watch as a sign of a strong market, yet counter-intuitively it doesn’t mesh with a favorite activity of mine: gallery hopping.

I don’t live in Chelsea, already saturated with galleries, or even some hipster corner of Brooklyn. I live below the Lower East Side and its crazy nightlife, surrounded by Chinese immigrant on one side and Hasidic Jews on the other. I haven’t been able to understand what the Chinese are saying about the galleries popping up with their big installations taking up the entire tiny storefront and the crowds they draw on random nights. I find it…odd.

You’d think I’d be delighted, and I am, but who goes to see these out of the way galleries? The far west 20s of Chelsea still packs galleries like sardines in a can, but the scene has been decentralizing for so long that gallery-hopping in Chelsea is no longer so cool as it once was. Even so, for gallery hopping, Chelsea can’t be beat. I suppose serious art collectors or people who are already fans of the artist would travel to a different area of town, but personally I need some incentive.

Let me explain the premise of gallery hopping: you hook up with a friend or two, you hop from gallery to gallery (thus the necessity of a centralized location), you look at art while drinking free wine and looking at the people. A good time is had by all, even if you don’t see works that you care for. Chelsea still holds major galleries like the Gagosians and Zwirner, but they are more established. For cutting edge galleries, you’ll likely tempted out to Brooklyn. Of course, the quality of art is uneven, but the scene is much better. So Chelsea and Brooklyn for gallery hopping, but my neighborhood? Only recently has it joined the ranks.

The recent proliferation of galleries strikes me as very much a by-product of a inflated art market, a market that is not around to support the tiny art spaces in 2009. On an individual level, this is unfortunate, but on a larger scale seems like a long overdue correction. For my gallery hopping purposes, Chelsea and Brooklyn aren’t going anywhere.

Gagosian: A Mistaken Identity

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Who is this man?

This is Gagosian, the infamous Larry Gagosian of Gagosian galleries around the world…and how I’ve disdained him in the past with reverse snobbery. ‘Oh ho ho, Mr. Gagosian, must be easy to be a behemoth when you have everything. From one successful gallery to another, hop skipping and jumping across the art world, making stars of artists as you go. The gall with which he opened another gallery in Rome despite the downfall of the art market. Hah! Not for me, not after you tricked me with your multiple Manhattan galleries so that I missed the Cy Twombly exhibition in 2007. For me, let there be street art and collectives in dingy Brooklyn warehouses and such. Let creativity run rampant in bohemian poverty!’

And yet, Larry is apparently really Lawrence Gilbert. An Armenian-American born in Los Angeles in 1945, and his past is not what I thought. He hates press, and a recent article for Intelligent Life describes the difficulty of getting those who know him to talk about him. An entrepreneurial and clever businessman, Gagosian has made his fortune through good judgement, salesmanship, and showmanship. Gagosian got his start in the ‘art world’ by selling posters near UCLA’s campus. According to Wikipedia,

“In the early 1980s he developed his business rapidly by exploiting the possibilities of reselling works of art by blue-chip modern and contemporary artists, earning the nickname “Go-Go” in the process. Working in concert with collectors including Douglas Cramer, Eli Broad and Keith Barish he developed a reputation for knowing how to push prices upwards as well as for staging museum quality exhibitions.”

After establishing a New York gallery in the mid-1980s Gagosian began to work with a stable of super collectors and expand his gallery empire. Now he has three locations in New York City (on Madison Avenue, West 24th St. and 21st St.), two locations in London (on Britannia and Davies Streets), one location in Los Angeles (in Beverly Hills) and his latest in Rome.He represents the best and biggest names. When art and business come together, there you find Gagosian.

Art for arts sake, on the other hand? Doesn’t have a place in his world. So with additional respect for the man, I’ll keep my reservations and ideal of unfettered garret life.

ADDITION: For added spice on Larry, see this article describing a recent letter to staff telling them, in these tough economic times, to sell art or get out.

Check out: Outsiders NY, corner of Bowery and Houston

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OUTSIDERS-NEW YORK

at 282-284 Bowery is open to the public until October 26 and then it will “disappear, like it was never here,” according to Lazarides, the ‘gallery’ putting the show on. Lazarides has worked outside the mainstream art scene, primarily with street and outsider art (for example, the infamous incognito graffiti artist Banksy whose currently banking tons). However, you can see from the photos that they present a much wider spectrum of art than that. This excellent and varied grouping was one of the most interesting shows I’ve seen, and included works by:

FAILE DAVID CHOE PAUL INSECT SPACE INVADER POLLY MORGAN ANTONY MICALLEF REAS BAST MARK JENKINS MIRANDA DONOVAN



Do I know who all these people are? Nope. Now, I want to.

Two things of special note: that super cool golden donkey in sneakers, which make Gilbert and George look like asses for not having done it themselves–

and David Choe. The pieces in the gallery I consistenly liked, and evn my not-so-arty boyfriend liked, were by Choe. It had a subltey that many of the more pop-influenced works did not, but was truly strong and stunning as well. My pics didn’t come out so well, so I snagged the one below that he took of the mural he did for the show on the building. Check him out at his website and blog.


Lazarides also notes on their website that Banksy has “on an unassuming corner of Manhattan, Banksy’s latest offering sees a fully kitted out Pet Shop and Charcoal Grill open to the public. Fur coats with twitching tails, hot dogs frolicking under heat lamps and chimps touching themselves in front of National Geographic.” Sweet–will be finding that next.

Now, how cool is it to live in NYC and run across this stuff all over town?