Tour date: November 20, 2014
The idea of this tour was not to survey the Lower East Side art scene and not even to seek out the most memorable work currently being shown. The idea of this tour was to seek out work that was both interesting and affordable. The criteria we applied was the same as that of the Affordable Art Fair—no work over $10,000 and the majority of the work under $5000. It turned out to be surprisingly easy, which is what may be one of the things that distinguishes The Lower East Side from Chelsea (and Brooklyn from The Lower East Side). Rents, of course, are lower here than in Chelsea and you don’t have to sell as much to pay your bills. It’s easier to take a chance on an emerging artist, easier to build someone’s career here without worrying about meeting your monthly nut. So when I scouted the storefronts on Ludlow and Orchard and Broome and Stanton I had no problem finding interesting work at affordable prices. The difficulty was in narrowing things down so that we could see a good number of works within a small geographic area in a relatively short time. As it is, our two hour tour took about 2 ½ hours but we did visit six galleries.
Our tour took us to the following galleries:
- Anastasia Photography for the photojournalistic work of Guillermo Cervera
- Catinca Tabacaru Gallery for a show they have called “Danger Is In The Neatness of Identification” featuring the techno/fabric work of Robin Kang and paintings/collage of Duhirwe Rushemeza
- Van Der Plas Gallery for ”Red, Yellow and Orange,” paintings by Ford Crull, Debra Drexler and Peggy Cyphers
- Krause Gallery for “No Pun Intended,” paintings by Angelo Volpe and Notre Chauvet
- Louis P. James Gallery for David Mramor’s show “Venus” two sets of paintings focusing on the artist’s mother
- Frosch & Portmann Gallery for Magnolia Laurie’s “Landmark”, small beautiful paintings on wood.
We ended the official tour on Stanton Street but I would have been remiss as a tour guide if I did not bring my group to what I think is the most interesting show on the Lower East Side at the moment—“Heinz Mack: From ZERO to Today, 1955-2014” at Sperone Westwater on The Bowery. This beautiful gallery has put together a retrospective of Mack’s work from the start of his career to the present day and it’s a wonderful compliment to the ZERO show presently at the Guggenheim. The members of the group seemed to really appreciate the work and I was happy to have the opportunity to see it again. We parted outside the gallery, the group taking off for the various places to lunch in that neighborhood and I to the New Museum up the street for the Chris Ofili show. More about that later.
