After an installation of Elizabeth Peyton drawings in a room at the Hotel Chelsea in 1993, Gavin Brown’s enterprise opened on Broome Street in 1994. Many years, and several moves later, Gavin Brown’s enterprise opened its doors in a historic former brewery building in Harlem, with three floors of exhibition space. Below, three new exhibits opened on March 4.
Update July 2020 ~ In a surprise move, Gavin Brown will close his gallery and join forces with Barbara Gladstone as a partner, bringing with him ten artists he is representing. He will be closing the three-story Harlem gallery, opened in 2016.
Frida Orupabo, Cables to Rage ~ First Floor Gallery
This is the first solo exhibition for the Norwegian-artist, Frida Orupabo, who exhibits collages of found materials, creating eye-popping, layered images in exquisite detail.
Orupabo’s multi-layered life as an artist & sociologist meld into her exploration of “questions around race, family relations, gender, sexuality, violence and identity” in this exhibit.
Many of her collages are “constructed from Orupabo’s prolific archive of found materials. These works serve as a physical extension of the artist’s Instagram feed, @nemiepeba, a collection of image, text, video and sound….”
Avery Singer Days of the Weak (Computer Pain) ~ 2nd Floor
The gallery description for Days of the Weak (Computer Pain) begin with the words “Stretching it Wider” “Some things that work in one decade don’t work in the next, so mark it down as a noble idea that failed.” And so we enter the 2nd Floor of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, with an exhibit by New York artist, Avery Singer.
The high ceiling, painted steel beams, and brick-work, remnants of the now Landmarked Yuengling Brewing Company (c.1905), is a perfect setting for Singer’s large-format series of seven pieces based on the days of the week. The thought process for this body of work came to be while Singer was participating in a show at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo. We learned that, for example, the canvas Saturday, evokes “the impressionists with its portrayal of someone rowing a canoe, wearing a beret, with the dappled light of trees falling on them.”
Jos De Gruyter & Harald Thys, Objects as Friends ~ 4th Floor
Bringing new meaning to large-scale, the exhibit Objects as Friends consists of 311 photographs of arrangements of found objects, in such incredible resolution that – as the gallery info suggests, “each speck of dust is captured precisely…” and “colors rendered so accurately as to create a sense of hyper-reality…”
Background written about the title by the gallery, perfectly described, below…
Objects as Friends, the title of the show, finds its origins in the German language and was first spoken by Johannes* – an amateur painter who lived from 1947 to 2010 near Aachen, Germany. Shortly before his death, Johannes made a radical change in his artistic practice; after spending a lifetime devoted to abstract expression he conceived of the idea to paint objects. The banal things around him gave him inspiration, things he found during his long walks, things that were no longer of use, things that were dear to him. He called them his friends, “Objekten als Freunden” or “Objects as Friends”. Johannes died suddenly before he could begin the series.
Frida Orupabo, Cables ro Gage ~ Avery Singer, Days of the Weak (Computer Pain) ~ Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Objects as Friends will be on view to April 22, 2018.
Gavin Brown’s enterprise is located at 439 West 127th Street, Harlem
Below – Gavin Brown’s enterprise, 291 Grand Street, NYC
On tap, Jacolby Satterwhite: Blessed Avenue. This is Satterwhite’s first solo show with the gallery. the exhibition will include a 30-minute digital video, a concept album, and a retail installation offering accessibly-priced editions ~ on view to May 6, 2018
A closing event will take place on Saturday, April 21st from Noon to 6pm.
