Just Like Taco Trucks, Art Takes to the Road
taken from NAMTA PALETTE
Just Like Taco Trucks, Art Takes to the Road On a recent Saturday, Elise Graham and her 23‐year‐old son, Aaron, pulled a 12‐foot van into a parking spot on West 14th Street in Greenwich Village, swung open the back doors, lowered the aluminum stairs, and welcomed visitors inside their mobile Rodi Gallery. 6
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June 18, 2014
Around the United States, art is on the roll. Inspired by the success of food trucks, gallery owners like the Grahams, who are based in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., have been taking their show on the road. For the last year, they have traveled to populated spots like the meatpacking district of Manhattan, the Peekskill train station and Astoria Park in Queens. This Saturday, they are parking in the center of Bushwick Open Studios, a three‐day festival in Brooklyn. Rodi exhibits the work of emerging artists, like the vibrant still lifes of Torey Thornton, 23, who paints on slatted wood panels. On West 14th Street, the van drew pedestrians heading home from brunch, tourists on their way to the High Line, and art lovers who knew of the gallery and used Facebook to find its location. Ted Alexandro, 45, a comedian from Astoria, admired “the DIY spirit” when he happened on the roving gallery beneath the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. “Seeing art displayed inside a truck that felt like a gallery brought a big smile to my face,” he said. In interviews, mobile owners say they are trying to avoid the confines — and politics — of the gallery system; to help people think about art in different ways; or to reach more communities, especially those with young and old people who tend not to visit art districts. That was what motivated Berge Zobian of Providence, R.I., to create his truck in 2012,
equipped with 44 linear feet of exhibition space, a stereo system, security cameras, projection monitors and even a bar for making coffee. On one occasion he took 40 paintings to a church, one priced at $35,000. “I’ve heard it all along,” said Mr. Zobian, who has also owned brick‐and‐mortar institutions for the past 14 years. “People say, ‘I wish you had a gallery in my town,’ as if you can just get up and build a new gallery.”
While statistics on mobile galleries are hard to come by, social media shows the trend catching on in Los Angeles; Seattle; Santa Fe, N.M.; Tampa Bay, Fla.; Chicago; and even Alberta, where a ’60s teardrop‐red trailer presents works from a changing lineup of local artists. Pinterest boards show a range of designs on pages dedicated to mobile galleries, and Twitter is full of people advertising their whereabouts with hashtags such as #keeptrucking. Ann Fensterstock, a lecturer on contemporary art and the author of “Art on the Block,” a history of New York art galleries, said these galleries are “part of the zeitgeist of this moment in art creating.” Critics, however, point out that artists may not be taken seriously without gallery backing. This is hardly the first time American artists have gone mobile. Before opening a gallery in the East Village, Gracie Mansion staged her “Limo Show” in 1981 in a rented limousine, parked in SoHo, where she invited passers‐by into the back seat for Champagne while she pitched her friends’ art. A more recent example is Doug Aitken’s “Station to Station” project, a happening on a train from coast to coast last year, with shows in nine cities. St. Louis even used horse‐drawn carriages to take art into communities in the early 1900s. For the young Mr. Graham, who graduated with a B.F.A. from the Cooper Union in 2013 and is embarking on an art career, the decision to go mobile was ideological and practical. “When I see how art is operating now, it’s so insular,” he said. “It’s so in its own world, it’s not fighting to be part of everyday life.”
“I get fired up, and I want to have it in more places,” he added. Brenda Scallon, based in Seattle, turned from a traditional gallery to a mobile format with her Caravan Gallery‐Parlor &
Roadside Attractions, in a 1974 Airstream. It has an artist residency program in the back.
“I missed it,” she said of her traditional gallery, “but rents were really high, and to justify that, I would have to devote 12 hours a day, seven days a week.” Her overhead is now $300 a year, compared with the $1,200 a month she used to pay, which means she can charge artists a lower commission and have more time to make her own art. Ms. Graham pays about $395 a month for the truck, insurance and gas, and says that gives her the ability to take risks. “We have tremendous freedom to show the most cutting‐edge Conceptual art that we want,” she said. Among the artists she and her son exhibit is Brandon Ndife, who said showing his work at Rodi lets him test gallerygoers’ reactions without worrying only about sales. “There was a burst of energy after the show,” he said. “With that, I’m going to reach out.” But Edward Winkleman, owner of Winkleman Gallery, formerly on West 27th Street in Chelsea, argues that you can’t show art based on economics alone. “I’m a real stickler when it comes to matching the work with its bes tcontext,” he said. “Just using a mobile gallery because you can’t afford the rent isn’t a good enough reason to show some types of art
in it.” Ms. Fensterstock points out that such a gallery is a much more tangible way to exhibit than another low‐cost option: selling work online. And then there is the argument mobile gallery owners seem most excited about: They work outside the traditional art world, and don’t have to engage in its politics. “The art world is kind of a consensus culture,” said Andrew Russeth, editor of Gallerist, the New York Observer’s art site.
“You have to play the game if you want be in the game.” For gallery owners and artists, this often means spending time courting collectors, or compromising to cater to more commercially driven tastes. And as art collectors become richer and more likely to “flip” art, some critics say “the game” is reaching a new level.
Mr. Graham said his peers were seriously considering whether they want to work within the gallery system at all: “We see artists do that, and they make a lot of money, but it can be detrimental to your practice.”
But art critics, scholars and gallery owners ask: Is it possible to become a force within the art world without commercial representation? “If you are going to spend serious money on a painting, I think you want a committed gallery backing it,” Mr. Russeth said. “So I think that’s where the truck thing breaks down.”
He cited Kenneth Cole. That designer started his career by selling shoes out of the back of a truck, but until he opened a tangible store and then started an entire line, he was not a big player in his industry.
Ms. Fensterstock agreed that the truck model has limitations. “It doesn’t make for return business; it doesn’t make for contemplation of the art by spending time with it; it doesn’t make for building a strong commercial place out of which the art gets sold,” she said. But that only matters if young people are seeking fame and fortune, she added.
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