It’s An Art Gallery. No A Living Room. O.K. Both
It’s an Art Gallery. No, a Living Room. As a subscriber, www.patreon.com/DaddyBears you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. There was wine in plastic cups and people milling around, but the similarity to any other art gallery opening ended there. This was the painter Austin Eddy’s one-bedroom walk-up apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on a Sunday afternoon. The entry to the multiple occupancy townhouse was redolent with cat litter. The centerpiece of the show was in his bedroom closet. The work was Ryan Johnson’s "Life Study," a colorful sculpture made of aluminum, medical casting tape and other materials. It was not for sale. The opening was merely an opportunity to help Mr. Johnson, an artist between gallery shows, get his latest work in front of an audience, and patron for Mr. Eddy to do some networking. Since the 2008 economic downturn, temporary do-it-yourself art galleries have proliferated in apartments, storefronts and other spaces all over the country.
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Call it a response to an art world in which dealer representation is increasingly hard to come by; exhibitions are costly; and formerly affordable areas like Bushwick have priced out artists, forcing them to seek out scrappier locations in which to show their work. "Artists are the tastemakers now," said Emily Weiner, 34, who, with her fellow painter Sharona Eliassaf, 35, periodically mounts an exhibition series called the Willows in her Brooklyn Heights apartment (on Willow Street). These home galleries are generally not moneymaking ventures. While a few might take a cut of the sales, most aim to just show the work and create ferment among artists and potential buyers. They bypass the commercial gallery system and its chic white-box formality. "It’s tough to be an artist in New York City," said Carole Server, a collector who attended Mr. Eddy’s show. "Studio space is incredibly expensive and difficult to find, and you face a lot of rejection.
How many artists get some recognition? Given a high-powered, high-priced art market, in which it can be impossible to break in, "the opportunities come as much from your colleagues," Ms. Weiner said. In 2013, she featured the artist Sam Adams in a Willows show. Mr. Adams suggested to the artist Jay Davis that he look at Ms. Weiner’s paintings. Then, last February, Mr. Davis included Ms. Weiner’s work in a group show that he curated in the space between the Ace Hotel’s lobby and the John Dory Oyster Bar in the Flatiron district. "A decade ago, collectors would buy works straight out of your graduate school studio and there was a feeling of cutthroat competitiveness," Ms. Weiner said. Most of these alternative galleries are open by appointment only and publicize their events through Instagram, Facebook and other social media. As a result, visiting these spaces can take effort. Indeed, those involved in this gallery scene say the trouble it takes to see shows at odd times in out-of-the-way spaces are a testament to the hunger for art experiences that feel human and intimate. This c ontent has been c reat ed wi th the help of GSA Content Generat or Demoversion!
"People travel to the neighborhood, find parking, music come to my front gate, call the number because there’s no buzzer," said Paul Soto, a writer who runs Park View gallery out of his home in the MacArthur Park section of Los Angeles. Several of the artists featured in these unorthodox shows are already established professionals, like Mr. Johnson, for example, who had a solo show at Sikkema Jenkins & Co in New York in 2010 and has been featured in group exhibitions at Marlborough Chelsea and the Sculpture Center. "The big thing is just having a show, no matter where it is," Mr. Johnson said. Once a novelty, artist-run spaces now abound. The artist David Prince runs Adjunct Positions out of his garage in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles. Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam, married artists, operate the Suburban gallery in two outbuildings in the yard of their home in the Oak Park neighborhood in Chicago. Many, not surprisingly, can be found in Brooklyn, including Mountain, which the artist Michael Fleming started this year in his Bushwick apartment, and Violet’s Cafe, which three artists started in 2013 in a former factory in Carroll Gardens.
Sarah Meyohas, an artist who recently received an M.F.A. Yale, runs a gallery in the apartment she grew up in on the Upper East Side. "When we were in school, we had critiques," she said. "I thought, ‘How can we have something that’s sort of like the next step? ’ This is the way I could engage in a really direct way with other people’s work. Some of these galleries aim to redress what many perceive as a market that favors artists who are white and male. "In some ways, I was interested in doing it because I was angry about what I was seeing around me," said Violet Dennison, 27, one of the artists who started Violet’s Cafe, which is currently on hiatus. "All the artists that were showing were men. To be sure, sometimes showing art in your home can be inconvenient. "The downside of it was having a lot of people in my apartment," said Katie Geha, 36, a writer and art historian, who until recently ran a gallery in her Austin, Tex., apartment.
