COLLECTORS INTEREST: BROOKLYN NOW

 

     When someone says “Brooklyn!” it generates a variety of images in the mind depending upon who you are. That’s because for the last two decades Brooklyn finally gained an identity beyond a question mark. Although the Brooklyn that was touted for years as a Brave New World of art gallery experiences has mostly disappeared, new generations of galleries are currently operating, and many young artists are constantly arriving to fill them. What makes the scene there more vibrant is that unlike Soho or Chelsea, which were created through the machinations of a professional class of art dealers, a majority of the Brooklyn spaces were and are run by artists, either in a traditional gallery mode, or as an artists collective. Yet there were and are still professional galleries amid these, performing at just as successful a level as those in Manhattan centric art districts, but with a much more open perspective on what is actually being made and by whom. To say “Brooklyn Galleries” is to understate the case. Brooklyn is vast geographically, and the galleries, though focused in some areas and sporadic in others, are as diverse as their areas. For my first post in collaboration with Art-Collecting.com, I am choosing to present two galleries that represent an extremely cutting edge perspective and that, by and large, diverge from the character of spaces that historically preceded them.

BLACK AND WHITE GALLERY/PROJECT SPACE, run by Tatyana Okshteyn, started in Williamsburg in 2002, moved to Chelsea in 2006 and running both spaces for the next 4 years, the first as a project space, she moved in 2012 to Bushwick where she runs both in alternating spaces under the same roof. Her stable of artists has been consistent throughout as has been her gallery’s popularity. She has also participated in various art fairs such as Art On Paper and Pulse. I remember attending her gallery when it first opened in Williamsburg, I was active as a curator and had a show of my own in a gallery right next door. On days when I sat my show to meet and greet gallery visitors I would occasionally pop in there and chat with Tatyana. Her space was great, comprising an indoor space and a back yard the same size or larger, where she invited artists to mount challenging installations. I recall a dozen that were extremely memorable. Her new space is comparable though she now alternates exhibitions in one space between standard art on the wall to installation based arrangements. 

A recent exhibition of note was “Ground” by Everett Kane in which a series of highly organized and fantastical environments commingle a living space with a laboratory or engineering plant, every detail rendered in a speciously old fashioned “modern” style colored either gun metal gray or sepia brown, as if appearing in grainy old films or Victorian glass-exposed photographs. There are no people present, only the spaces  and the objects, as if to say that it’s unnecessary to describe the human condition by anything other than use value. The mysteriousness that pervades these rooms and the obscure origins of the machines that have displaced inhabitants create a viewing context that is both complex and captivating. Works by Kane come in two editions at different sizes: 28 ½ x 46 inches framed, edition of 5 with 2 AP, ranging from $2,500 to $3,200, and 44 x 70 inches, ranging from $4,500 to $5,200.

Also of interest is “Illuminating” by Megan Foster, a series of images culled from film and media images of the Western American landscape ranging from the totemic, the frightening, the mysterious, and the atmospheric; yet rendered in a pop style with glow in the dark colors ranging against moodier ones. She experiments with color and tone to create surreal scenes—reindeers with glow in the dark antlers; a secret signal tracing down from some celestial location to the spot in the distant mountains; a bush filled with lightning bugs as the only form of illumination within a darkness that is all enveloping—that can be transformative upon the viewer. One enters Foster’s images with both trepidation and wonder.These works range between 17 x 16 inch works for $2,800, 30 x 40 inch works for $4,800, and one large work, measuring 68 x 54 inches, for $11,800.

MINUS SPACE has been a Brooklyn stalwart for eleven years since first opening in 2006 at 98 Fourth Street in the mostly industrial Gowanus area. Five years later, founders Matthew Deleget and Rosanna Martinez moved to Dumbo. Their focus is on reductive and concept-driven art. Though this may seem at first to be an extremely restrictive endeavor, it was initially enriched by the fact that before they had an actual exhibition space, founders Matthew Deleget and Rosanna Martinez ran it as an online only gallery; it was by its very nature both expansive and inclusive, with an active agenda to exhibition both genders, artists from international locations, and locally within the environs of Brooklyn. They will remain in Brooklyn to mandate its importance not only as a community of “edgy” outsiders but as the vibrant and diverse real place it is and has always been. Minus Space now occupies its best location yet, a ground floor space in one of the original buildings built by the area’s founder, a tycoon who invented the cardboard box and, along with other partners, also innovated the construction of the first concrete high rise buildings. Their location is the Stable Building, so named because it was where Gair kept his draft horses. Now it houses Minus Space and two other galleries as well. It’s an apt space for art of soaring intention but also specific aesthetic demand. 

Recent exhibitions have included “Polychromy” with Gabriele Evertz and Sanford Wurmfeld, a pairing of two color based artists who share a long-held affiliation with Hunter College, a group that has yet to receive cumulative appreciation, but that Minus Space has been championing of late. Evertz works with vertical bands that alternate between a light gray and intense primary colors in various chromatic permutations. Without resorting to mark-making of any kind she is yet able to establish a dense environment in which color and color only holds sway. 

Wurmfeld provides an effect Yang to her Yin, combining the lattice of a grid delicately applied over glowing surfaces. The use of color in his paintings is more ethereal, and though he also uses grids, they seem to impose less of a limitation on the overall chromatic environment than presenting a foil against any easy reception of them. The viewer’s sensitivity must, at all points, accept the imposition of an ordering that is equally necessary as the fields of evanescence beyond. The mind switches back and forth between the two, between logic and emotion, sensation and intellect. Wurmfeld is a painter first but his painting is dialectically  ordered, alternating between the twin poles of the human condition. Mastery emerges from the mists of introspection.

     This is the first post of what I know will prove an extremely informative and enriching exploration of all facets of the New York gallery world, looking at a broad swath of venues and the personalities that began and run them. It's time to look away from the bottom line, to see the art world as it originally was, not a farm for new talent, but a garden where art dealers of vision cultivate and provide forums for artists of vision may grow and provide us with creative ferment and spiritual sustenance. It's our challenge to nurture and even, yes, collect them.