A feature from the fall/winter 2021 issue of the “Visual Arts Journal”
The Satellite Art Club, co-founded by SVA alumnus Brian Whiteley (top right, second from left) offers an anarchic, happily rude art venue in Brooklyn, an antidote to New York City’s increasingly corporate gallery scene.
Late last year, sva.edu featured a Q+A with Storm Ascher (BFA 2018 Visual & Critical Studies), founder of the “nomadic” gallery Superposition. Ascher’s project is one of several recent efforts by SVA alumni to rethink the traditional gallery and exhibitions model and help create a more accessible, equitable and interconnected art world. Here are some others.
De:Formal
Co-founded in 2015 by Vincent Cy Chen and Wednesday Kim (both BFA 2015 Fine Arts), De:Formal curates and promotes critical conversations, exhibitions and interviews both online and offline, as well as monthly virtual residencies. The artist-run platform is focused on contemporary art and makes space for video, performance, installation, sculpture, media art and other forms that are under-recognized in the conventional gallery system.
Dragon, Crab and Turtle
Painter Katherine Bernhardt (MFA 2000 Fine Arts) recently left New York City to resettle in her hometown of St. Louis, where she has transformed a former car dealership into a studio and storage facility. That building is now also home to Dragon, Crab and Turtle, a gallery (currently open by appointment only) named for the terracotta fauna motifs that decorate the building’s preserved early-1900s façade and dedicated to showcasing underrepresented artists, art forms and artistic communities from around the U.S. and the world. So far, the space has hosted everything from solo shows to a pop-up Moroccan rug sale to an exhibition of work from the eclectic and vast private collection of St. Louis artist and gallerist Philip Slein.
Installation view of “L’Épilogue” (2021), a solo show by Marvin Touré (MFA 2016 Fine Arts) at Haul Gallery.
Haul Gallery
Haul Gallery, co-organized by Erin Davis and Max C. Lee (both MFA 2016 Photography, Video and Related Media) and located in Brooklyn, offers an “art share” option inspired by the community farm share model. The structure offers collectors a chance to purchase shares in one year’s worth of exhibitions, for which artists get paid upfront.
Haul continues a forward-thinking and experimental ethos initiated in Davis and Lee’s previous collaborative project, Re: Art Show. Their new model aims to offer an alternative to the blue-chip gallery system, exploring new ways of presenting work and complete financial transparency.
Peep Space
Artists and art teachers Jane Kang Lawrence (MAT 2006 Art Education) and Monica Carrier started Peep Space in the Westchester County village of Tarrytown in March 2020. Their goal: Create a community-minded, artist-run space free from the high-profit pressures (and exclusivity) of a typical contemporary gallery.
Past exhibitions include “Plus One,” in which the invited artists were asked to invite another artist to show with them; “Art for Angels,” featuring work by young students with special needs; a guest-curated group show on family; and “Flat File,” featuring more than 50 artists’ work, culled from open calls.
Karolina Majewska (MFA 2017 Photography, Video and Related Media), Credo, 2020, wax and water tattoo. From “A Discourse of Accord,” a 2021 exhibition at Transmitter, a gallery whose co-directors include several SVA alumni.
Satellite Art Club
davidhasselhoff.net
This members-only club in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood hosts exhibitions and performances, sells art and maintains a well-stocked bar and an anarchic, happily rude spirit. Co-founder and artist Brian Andrew Whiteley (MFA 2013 Fine Arts), whose Satellite Art Show takes a similarly iconoclastic approach to the typically staid art fair, started the project with artists Jen Catron, Joseph Latimore and Paul Outlaw. The venue opened last fall and quickly won admiring press from Artnet, Forbes and The New York Times.
Transmitter
Transmitter is a collaborative curatorial initiative founded in 2014 with a rotating leadership model; its current group of nine directors includes MFA Photography, Video and Related Media alumni Kate Greenberg (2010), Melvin Harper (2017) and Sara Meghdari (2016). Based in Brooklyn and focused on multidisciplinary, international and experimental programming, Transmitter promotes racial and social justice in its messaging and operations; their 2021 benefit supported the Brooklyn Bail Fund and American Indian Community House.
A virtual gallery installation by the Visionary Art Collective, a website and organization founded by Victoria Fry (BFA 2012 Fine Arts).
Visionary Art Collective
Founded by Victoria Fry (BFA 2012 Fine Arts), Visionary hosts online exhibitions, editorial content, workshops, educational materials and an artist directory. Focused on emerging, mid-career and established artists and educators, the organization’s mission is to connect contemporary art and education, decentralize the global art community and increase artists’ and teachers’ access to resources.
A version of this interview appears in the fall/winter 2021 Visual Arts Journal.
