Keeping Art Alive

“I wanted to get away from the old patterns of uptown galleries…I didn’t want to be bothered with all the social trimmings, things that often counted more than the art itself,”[1] so said Paula Cooper, the first person to open a commercial gallery in SoHo, in 1968. Following Cooper’s initiative and drawn by the temptingly low rents, other galleries flooded into the area and artists began to create live/work spaces there, which made this once industrial wasteland a haven for keeping art “alive.” Yet, ironically, this attempt to situate art at the margins in the 1960s resulted in a deluge of gentrification that has gradually diluted the artistic energy that those galleries and artists helped to create. With trendy upscale boutiques and chain shops taking over the streets, and an increasing number of artists decamping to other venues, does the creative essence still exist in SoHo? How can art stay “alive” in the absence of artists? A glimpse at the exhibitions of two art organizations may provide us with some clues.

The Drawing Center employs an interdisciplinary experiment in its exhibitions in order to retain its artistic energy and activate the venue. Thread Lines, a group exhibition currently on view, features sixteen artists who engage in sewing, knitting, and weaving to create a wide range of works that illuminate the affinities between the mediums of textiles and drawing.[2] Yet, the exhibition explores more than just the interactions between these two mediums. The physical contexts, or architectural structures, are also incorporated as integral parts of the work. One example is Monica Bgenoa’s One hundred and sixty three shades of yellow, green, orange, red, purple, brown, grey and blue (so far)(Figure 1), a project that combines a series of handmade embroideries—which reproduce photographic images of fruits and vegetables on a life-size scale—with schematic outlines of the compositions on the wall. The participation of the wall drawing contributes to the diversity of the representation, while also transforming this work into a site-specific project in which the drawing can be flexibly accommodated as the embroideries’ position and content change. Interestingly, Bgenoa’s approach to the work coincides with what a restoration expert usually does to the remaining fragments of ancient architecture—that is, rebuilding a model on which the remains are assembled and the missing patterns are outlined. This connection extends the span of the artist’s exploration of representation and reality into the distant past, about which contemporary people have all kinds of fantasies. Another example in this exhibition is a work by Chicago-based artist Anne Wilson, who has transformed the main gallery’s four central columns into a weaving loom around which two performers walk, weaving thread to create a huge, colorful fabrication[3] (Figure 2). This site-specific performance brings what happens in the studio into the exhibition space and results in a dynamic interplay between artists and viewers. Moreover, it lends a contemporary interpretation to the history of the Drawing Center’s physical structure, which was originally built in 1866 for the Positive Motion Loom Company. By integrating the architectural structure into the work, the exhibition tells a rich and layered story about how commonplace items can be transformed into art as time and their physical contexts evolve.

Figure 1: One hundred and sixty three shades of yellow, green, orange, red, purple, brown, grey and blue (so far), photograph by Yangxingyue Wang, October 9, 2014, The Drawing Center, NY.

Figure 2: One scene of Fin de Siècle, photograph by Yangxingyue Wang, October 9, 2014, Swiss Institute, NY.

The gallery space of the Swiss Institute is similarly activated through the introduction of drama in Fin de Siècle—the inaugural edition of its Annual Design Series. As “a curatorial homage to Eugène Ionesco’s 1952 absurdist play ‘The Chairs,’ the exhibition includes an eclectic array of late 20th century design pieces sourced from museum and private collections.”[4] Presented in an immersive mise-en-scène, chairs are assembled into small vignettes, cast as characters, and imbued with life.[5] Lights are one of the most magnetic elements in the space. With the shifting colors and distorted shadows that they cast on the walls, underlying plots and tensions are uncovered and rendered visible to the visitors. In one group, Marcel Breuer’s low, geometric, simple tubular steel chair is cornered and overlooked by three high-rising, organically molded, twisted seats by Martine Boileau. Yet, the disadvantage in the steel chair’s physical form appears to be inverted by the “snarling” shadow behind it, which indicates its underlying authority. This juxtaposition, accompanied by the dramatic lighting effect, involves an amalgam of inaudible conversations that feature the connections and controversies between modernism and postmodernism, masculinity and femininity, and practicality and artistic quality. Additionally, the second floor of the gallery, which has been turned into a storeroom, highlights the unavailability of the chairs and recalls a sense of sorrow about past eras of grand movements. The rearrangement and reinterpretation of renowned masterpieces renders two new possibilities: to activate the exhibition space and bring new viewing pleasures to visitors.

Some recent researches have excluded artists as the most decisive factor in the process of gentrification and have viewed them, after a comprehensive examination of cases and data, as “some kind of natural middle-term residents between the disenfranchised and a more moneyed set.”[6] It is a bit sad to hear these results, as they seem to indicate that the receding of artistic energy is an inextricable and irreversible process. In this sense, it is still unclear whether the marginal spirit of art can survive the ongoing exodus of artists, once a main source of cutting-edge ideas. However, the two examples above, though unable to cover the whole artistic map of SoHo, do reveal some new sparks. Part of the once anti-upscale claim has evolved into an exploration of the relationships among artworks, venues, and viewers, providing new momentum with which to keep art “alive.”

[1] Interview in The Art Dealers, New York, Clarkson N.Potter, 1984, p. 190. Of all the first-generation commercial galleries to open in SoHo, Paula Cooper’s is the one which retained the character of an artist-run space the longest, with its penchant for group as opposed to solo exhibitions at various moments in its history and varied night-life programming of performance, dance, poetry and film events. It is one of the few commercial galleries to show video work which was not a particularly commercially viable art form.

[2] The drawing center, “Thread Lines,” accessed October 15, 2014, http://www.drawingcenter.org/en/drawingcenter/5/exhibitions/6/current/806/thread-lines/.

[3] The drawing center, “Anne Wilson Performance: To Cross (Walking New York),” accessed October 15, 2014, http://www.drawingcenter.org/en/drawingcenter/20/events/21/public-programs/879/Anne_Wilson_Performanclee/.

[4] Swiss Institute, “Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Fin de Siècle,” handout of the exhibition.

[5] Swiss Institute, “Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, curated by Andreas Angelidakis, Fin de Siècle,” handout of the exhibition.

[6] Ben Davis, “Are Artists to Blame for Gentrification? Or would SoHo, Chelsea, and Williamsburg have gentrified without them?” Slate, October 15, 2013, accessed October 15, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/10/are_artists_to_blame_for_gentrification_or_would_soho_chelsea_and_bushwick.html.