The exhibition will showcase works by French painter Nicolas Pol at a space most artists could only dream of showing: a private home owned by one of the world’s great art collectors on New York’s Upper East Side. The 45-foot-wide, 22,000-square-foot building also happens to be the former home of one of the city’s most notorious galleries, Salander-O’Reilly. Roitfeld convinced the new owner, real estate mogul Aby Rosen, to turn over two of the brownstone’s five floors to Pol, who will install a never-before-seen series devoted to a fictional theme park he’s calling Neverlodge.

“The whole curatorial process is different from anything we’ve done before — we’re dealing with 12 or 13 rooms,” Roitfeld told ARTINFO. The home, which is not Rosen’s own residence but is owned by his real estate company, has now been taken over by a vibrant, graffiti-inspired series that looks a bit like what might happen if Gorky met Basquiat at a sinister Six Flags. Most of the paintings in the show are already sold or on hold at prices ranging from $40,000 to $60,000.

The exhibition is also significant because it is Roitfeld’s second consecutive show produced without his partner in crime, Andy Valmorbida, the young Australian dealer with whom Roitfeld mounted pop-up exhibitions by Richard Hambleton and threw glamorous art parties around the world. (All of Pol’s previous New York shows, however, were produced by Roitfeld alone.) Valmorbida is now pursuing his own private dealership, Valmorbida & Co., based in Europe. “Like everything in life, people decide to make changes,” Roitfeld said of the duo’s decision to pursue independent projects, noting that they remain friends.

The world of Neverlodge is part brothel, part ticketed amusement park. “It’s about vices, a sin-oriented place, but it’s also about luxury,” Pol said of the colorful paintings. And indeed, what better location for such an exhibition than a disgraced gallery-turned-private mansion for sale? Though Pol says he’s been pondering the series of paintings and sculptures for a long time, “when I saw the place, I thought that it made sense.”

“Neverlodge” opens on March 6 at 22 E 71st Street in New York.

To view original article click here

ZIP MAGAZINE IN AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION WITH VLADIMIR RESTOIN ROITFELD TALKING ABOUT HIS CURRENT EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK WITH ARTIST OUATTARA WATTS `VERTIGO`.

ART SPHERE

It was Tuesday night February 7th in New York City. Like always Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld kicks off his exhibition right before fashion week starts. ‘VERTIGO,’ a new solo exhibition by Ouattara Watts, features fifteen large scale paintings. This is Watt’s first major exhibition in New York in nearly five years. Drawn to Neo-Expressionism and inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat, whom he met in Paris during his studies at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, Watts brings a new breeze into the art scene. The exhibition opening was celebrated with an intimate dinner at ACME.

Art crowd meets fashion crowd

No one knows how to bring the art and fashion scene under one roof better than Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld. He brings a fashionable, sophisticated touch to every event. Bringing together these two worlds gives you a great sense of how much the art and fashion scene influence each other and what a great energy it creates between collaborators. This kind of chic feeling was emulated by Roitfeld’s mum, fashion icon Carine Roitfeld, his sister Julia Roitfeld with cute baby belly, Giovanna Battaglia, Diane Von Fürstenberg, her son Alexander von Fürstenberg, and Designer Derek Blasberg. Intellectual spirit was represented from the British, Indian novelist and essayist Salman Rushdi. At the event I also spotted Pc Valmorbida, super model and Chanel girl Elisa Sednaoui and many other well dressed art and fashionista’s. By the end of the evening over 1000 art connoisseurs marveled Ouattara Watt´s paintings!

The exhibition will run through February 19, 2012 at 560 Washington Street 37 E, New York City.

View original article here.

Let’s start this review of “Ouattara Watts: Vertigo” by discussing the post-opening dinner, prepared for about 120 people by executive chef Mads Refslund at ACME at 9 Great Jones Street on Feb. 7, 2012. Salt baked beets with red grapefruit and aged vinegar, “duck in a jar” with pickled vegetables, black heirloom carrots with salted lardo and blood orange, Arctic char with leeks and sherry vinegar. No less than four custom cocktails, and for dessert, Danish doughnuts and chocolate ganache triangles.

It was pretty good. My judicious wife, the art restorer Lisa Rosen, reserved her approval for the casserole of chicken, fingerling potatoes and fried eggs. And, she drank some red wine.

In attendance was our host, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld; his mother, the former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld; the elegant Alba Clemente and the Jim Jarmusch movie star Isaac de Bankolé; and several art dealers, including David Hunt (who introduced Ouattara to Roitfeld), Stellan Holm, Tico Mugrabi, Sam Orlofsky and Mauro Nicoletti from Rome; and scores of fashionable young people — publicity was arranged by the estimable Nadine Johnson & Associates, and the event coincides with the beginning of New York Fashion Week.

The artist himself, with his lovely wife and grown daughter, were among the last to arrive at the restaurant, with the meal already under way. He was greeted with thunderous applause, as he is loved by all.

Later on, Glenn O’Brien rose to give a toast. “Socrates, Cleopatra, Napoleon, Madonna, all the greats go by a single name,” he proclaimed. “So I give you Ouattara!”

The exhibition itself features 15 large paintings installed in a large space at 560 Washington Street, just below Houston Street in the far West Village, Feb. 7-Feb. 20, 2012. The show is the fourth organized in this raw warehouse by the young Roitfeld (b. 1984), a task that requires the gallery space to be built from scratch each time. It’s a well-proportioned room, both humble and exclusive, as a recent visit found the gallery barely marked on the outside. So be alert, the address is 560 Washington Street, door 37E.

Roitfeld’s approach may be different than most dealers — “I have a lot to learn,” he confessed — but it seems to work. Most of Ouattara’s paintings, priced between $50,000 and $70,000, have been sold.

In her essay for the show’s catalogue, Linda Yablonsky writes that Ouattara the painter — who as everyone knows comes to New York via Paris and Cote d’Ivoire — is a “citizen of the world” and also a “sorcerer,” inspired by his grandfather, who she describes as a “diviner of human relations” and “a man of enchantment.”

Such notions sent me directly to the oldest book in my modest library, Giorgio de Santillana’s Hamlet’s Mill (1969), a new age compilation of myth that speculates that the beginnings of knowledge can be found in observation of the heavens by early peoples.

When de Santillana refers to “operative powers of the cosmos. . . the planets as they move along the zodiac. . . deities subterranean or celestial. . . signs as old as time. . . the numbers of rudimentary science,” he could be an art critic writing about Ouattara. His paintings contain “tantalizing fragments of a lost whole,” and hint at a “dreamed-of first age of the world.”

So if the universe is a cryptogram, as de Santillana thought, with mystic clues hidden in the stars, in the elements and in traditions handed down from the ancients, why should not the artist hold the key? With a concentration of the mind, the riddle can be revealed.

“Ouattara Watts: Vertigo,” Feb. 7-20, 2012, at 560 Washington Street, door 37E, New York, N.Y. 10014

To view original article click here

Armory Arts Week

22 East 71st street, New York NY 10021

by Karen Day in Culture on 27 January 2012

While we all like to tap into an artist’s brain, find out exactly what goes on in their mind to make them create what they do, sometimes there isn’t really more behind a work of art than simply a vision that a person is unable to explain through words. The different approaches to making art—from pragmatic to utterly emotional—is part of what keeps the field perpetually intriguing.

A reticent painter originally from Côte d’Ivoire, Ouattara Watts recently opened up his studio to Cool Hunting for a preview of the newly formed works comprising his forthcoming exhibition. The large, garage-like space is located in an industrial part of Brooklyn between Williamsburg and Bushwick that’s home to numerous emerging artists. With both the Whitney Museum and Venice biennials on his résumé, the veteran painter may hold more clout than his neighbors, but his artistic spirit seems unaffected by his widespread success.

Organized by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, Watts’ upcoming NYC exhibition—which Roitfeld says is more like a small retrospective—will feature 18 new paintings alongside a few existing pieces. Watts completed all of these large-scale works in a matter of about six months, explaining that with the way the world is right now, he has a lot to say. At the moment, he is mostly preoccupied by the population of mistreated children in the world, a concern that presumably evolved since the birth of his own child, a life-changing moment for him.

Bursting with color and layered in fabrics and objects picked up from his global travels, Watts’ paintings are still entrenched in his own style of Neo-Expressionism. Cryptic serial numbers abound, alluding to a secret code that only he knows about, but one that could potentially be worked out through clever deciphering or a deep understanding of West African cosmology. The mysticism that prevails reflects a coalescent spirituality, his beliefs not tied to one religion or another, but that together are very much a part of his enduring creative passion.

The mix of media Watts uses is also symbolic of his constant exploration, and the people he encounters along the way. For example, the massive piece, “Vertigo #4″ is covered in a denim remnant given to him by the shop owner of a fabric store near his Midtown apartment. Glued to this is an Ikea-like dish cloth embroidered with the initials “JL”—who they belong to Watts claims not to know. These found objects and recycled fabrics likely speak to the movement against using expensive materials, a notion developed in the 1970s by fellow Ivorian painter Mathilde Moraeau which she called Vohou-Vohou. The mix also undoubtedly marks a more natural way for Watts to express himself, free of monetary limitations or a prescribed aesthetic.

Although known in his own right, it’s difficult not to associate Watts with the legendary artist Jean-Michael Basquiat. The two met in Paris while Watts was studying at the renowned L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and while their friendship was short-lived due to Basquiat’s death, Watts considers him almost like a soulmate. Basquiat convinced him to move to NYC, where Watts gave rise to African art with prominent shows at the Gagosian and Vrej Baghoomian galleries.

The exhibition opens 7 February and runs through 19 February 2012 at the cavernous space known simply as 560 Washington Street.

To view original article click here

THE DALLAS ART FAIR | Booth F2
1807 Ross Avenue, Dallas, 75201

April 13 – 15, 2012

OUATTARA WATTS
RICHARD DUPONT
NICOLAS POL
YI CHEN

PDF of works presented

More information coming soon.

slideshow

12►

Yi Chen 陈屹

New York-based Chinese artist.

The artist uses culturally mediated images from advertisements and fashion magazines as inspiration for his work. He sees his paintings and collages as metaphors for hybrid, mutated concepts of beauty borne from a global popular culture. These ideas of beauty are formulated in this age of high-speed technology and interconnectedness and transcend country and race. This concept of hybridization and mutation formulate a tense balance in his work, combining enticing beauty and repelling grotesqueries that result in magnetic paintings.

Chen begins his creative process by assembling collages of human (and sometimes mammalian) facial features cut-out from popular fashion magazines. These collages of perfect/imperfect specimens are the foundation of his work. Like an artistic scientist, he disregards race, gender and age and selects individual characteristics and reconstructs them to form a new human species. These collages then become the figurative models for his lushly rendered oil paintings.

Yi Chen was born in Beijing at the end of the Cultural Revolution. He completed his studies at the Affiliated Art High School of Central Art Academy, Beijing in 1995 during China’s economic boom and ‘new cultural revolution’. He received his BFA at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2000 and his MFA at Purchase College State University of New York in 2003. He had a solo exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York in 2006 and a two-person show at Plum Blossoms Gallery, New York in 2004. He has taken part in group exhibitions at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley Collage, Massachusetts, at the New York Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, New York and at Mark Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles. Chen will also have a solo exhibition later this year at Gallery Beijing Space, Beijing as well take part in a group exhibition at L MD Gallery in Paris, France.

Born in Beijing, China
Lives and works in Queens, NY

Education
2003 MFA, Purchase College State University of New York (SUNY), Purchase, New York, USA
2000 BFA, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
1995 Diploma, Secondary Fine Art School of Central Art Academy, Beijing, China

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2009 Beaut-esque, Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. 04.11 – 5.16. 2009 Gallery Beijing Space, Beijing, China. 09.26 – 12.21.2009
2006 Yi Chen, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY 03.17 – 04.15.2006
2004 The Hybrid, Yi Chen and Ying-Yueh Chuang, Plum Blossoms Gallery, New York, NY 04.15 – 05.15.2004
2003 Local-Global, Organized by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), Regent Wall Street Hotel, New York, 11.05.2003 – 01.31.2004
Re-figuration, Recent paintings by Yi Chen and Zhang Yu, Gallery 456, Chinese-American Arts Council New York, 10.24 – 11.26.2003
The New Species, Richard and Dolly Maass Gallery, Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY 11.10 -11.29.2003
2000 Well Dressed, Anna Leonowens Gallery, NSCAD, Halifax, NS, Canada. Fall 2000

Selected Group Exhibitions
2010 The Shape of Time; From Micropolis to Metropolis, Yeosu International Art Festival, Jinnam Art and Cultural Center, Yeosu, Korea, 10.2010
2007 Don’t Look (Contemporary Drawings from Martina Yamin Collection), Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, 09.19, 2007 – 12. 9, 2007
Posing, Curated by Andrea Cote and Joelle Jensen, Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, New York, 09.18 – 11.11, 2007
Some Kind of Portrait, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, 06.30 – 07.28, 2007
2006 Materiality, Curated by Erin Abraham, Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York, NY. 06.29 – 08.25.2006
25 Bold Moves, Curated by Simon Watson and Craig Hensala of Scenic, presented by House of Campari, New York, NY. 05.05 – 21, 2006
Reflection/Refraction, Curated by Inhee Iris Moon, 2x13Gallery, New York, NY. 02.09 – 03.04.2006
2005 Mystic Truths, Curated by Scenic/Simon Watson, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL. 06.03 – 07.09.2005
Yet Another Reality, Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 02.21 – 04.08.2005
2004 Corporate Corporeality: Chinese Artists Re-examining the Body in the Global Capitalism, Plum Blossoms Gallery, New York, NY. 03.11 – 04.10.2004
2003 Cultural Narratives Juried Group Show, Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA. 03.07—
03.27.2003
Six Stories, Multicultural Center, Pier 21, Halifax, NS, Canada. Summer. 2003
New York Area MFA Exhibition, Hunter College Time Square Gallery, New York, NY. 02.01—02.22.2003
2002 Once Over, Juried exhibition, 323 West Exhibition Space, New York, NY. 09.06—09.30.2002

Selected Bibliography
2009 “Yi Chen, On Two Extremes,” HiArt, September 2009. p. 136-137
Wang, Si, “Just Perception – Half Illusion, Half Abstraction,” World Metropolitan, October
2009. p. 38
Lin, Jing, “Beijing Kid in New York,” NoArtMagazine, September 2009. p. 98-99
“Yi Chen” Contemporary Art News, November 2009, p. 121
2006 Mullins, Charlotte. Painting People: Figure Painting Today. New York: D.A.P./Distributed
Art Publishers, Inc., 2006
Kraft, Jessica, “One to Watch,” Artkrush.com, September 6, 2006
“Yi Chen,” The New Yorker, April 17, 2006
Johnson, Ken. “The Listings: Yi Chen,” New York Times, April 14, 2006, p. E26
“Art: Yi Chen,” Flavorpill listing, March 2006
2004 Heartney, Eleanor. “Ying-Yueh Chuang and Yi Chen at Plum Blossoms,” Art in America,
June/July 2004, p. 184

Theodora Richards, the daughter of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, shimmied around the room in a second skin of stretchy black lace, while the billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman grazed past Alexa Chung and Karolina Kurkova. Around 9:20 p.m., Mr. Hambleton, the famously reclusive graffiti artist who descended into obscurity after the 1980s art gold rush went bust, arrived with a bandage on his nose, seemingly dazed by the crowd.

The real draw that night, though, was Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, 26, and his business partner, Andy Valmorbida, 31, the show’s young curators and art dealers, who are reviving interest in Mr. Hambleton’s paintings. Mr. Valmorbida, the Australian heir to a food and coffee fortune, bounced around the gallery, chatting with buyers. Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, the son of Carine Roitfeld, the former editor in chief of French Vogue, stayed mostly in place, his curious Kewpie-doll eyes scanning the crowd.

It was a different scene two evenings earlier on the Lower East Side, where art dealers were opening their galleries for the beginning of the fall art season. Young 20-somethings, not recognizably rich or famous, wandered past the small storefronts in fedoras and jeans. At the Rachel Uffner Gallery on Orchard Street, about 150 people packed into a space the size of a large one-bedroom apartment and drank from cans of Tsingtao beer. The artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty’s opening show included work made using photographs, Plexiglas and acetate. And she hugged well-wishers that night despite a faulty air-conditioner that left most sticky.

But Ms. Uffner, 33, has more in common with her uptown peers than appearances suggest. Though one gallery owner may show an artist whose work now sells for $25,000 or more and another may show unknown artists whose work still goes largely unnoticed by big-name collectors or established critics, both are part of a new generation of New York gallerists who are slowly transforming the city’s art scene.

“There are new galleries popping up all over,” Ms. Uffner said, taking a break from the evening’s festivities. “People are beginning to recognize we have legitimate places to show.”

When the stock market collapsed in fall 2008, many people feared the art market would be dragged down with it. But art auction houses, including Christie’s and Sotheby’s, are currently reporting healthy business. Individual prices are often strong: At Phillips de Pury in May, one of Warhol’s famous images of Elizabeth Taylor sold for $26.9 million: about $3 million more than a similar work at the height of the market at Christie’s in 2007. And while Larry Gagosian and other blue-chip dealers continue to dominate sales for the wealthiest collectors, gallery owners who have opened their doors in the past few years seem to be thriving despite the persistent recession.

The New Art Dealers Alliance, a national organization of art professionals or gallery owners in business less than 10 years, said that nearly one-third of its 300 members are based in New York City.

Choosing which up-and-coming gallerists to profile for this article involved considering art dealers who either opened New York galleries or began working together within the last three years. Then art critics, gallery owners and art collectors were interviewed to narrow the field of gallerists who represented promising artists or had an interesting take on contemporary art.

The final cut included Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, with that famous last name and the prized connections that come with it; two dealers positioning themselves as the angry young men of the art world; and a scrappy out-of-towner hoping to make it big in New York.

Despite their differences, all share the need to actually make a living at this. Owning an art gallery is an expensive proposition. That is why many new galleries are on the Lower East Side, where rent can range from $2,000 to $10,000 a month, compared with $25,000 or more for a gallery in Chelsea. (Ms. Uffner says she pays less than $4,000.) Many new gallerists, like Laurel Gitlen, find their art spaces after walking around the neighborhood. Some, like Mr. Valmorbida and Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, have forsaken the traditional gallery space, choosing instead to hold exhibitions when and where they choose. (Artists generally earn 50 percent of the sale price of their work at galleries, while the gallery owner might earn 30 percent to 50 percent of a sale, depending on discounts, or whether an art adviser of another dealer is involved.)

Michele Maccarone, whose West Village gallery is well respected among the junior set, is worried that, as larger galleries continue to become more brand-conscious or the economy continues to slide, emerging gallerists might lose their nerve. “I opened 10 years ago, and it was down and dirty,” she said. “But even I’m playing it safe myself. That punkness and rawness, it really doesn’t exist anymore.” But at least, for now, she said, “people are trying to keep it real.”

Ramiken Crucible

If Marcel Duchamp had a mischievous little brother today, he would probably be a lot like Mike Egan. Last year, this art-handler-turned-dealer helped organize the Art Handling Olympics, a competition among Mr. Egan’s brawny peers, roughly 50 in all, who bubble-wrapped paintings and hung 60-pound blocks of lead in front of 200 spectators at his gallery. And in September, the same night other galleries around the Lower East Side celebrated the opening of the art season, showing work that included photographs of people dressed in tutus and a sculpture comprising trophies, Mr. Egan hosted a screening of the disturbing cult film “Trash Humpers.” (No metaphor there.)

Fed up with New York’s commercial gallery ethos, Mr. Egan, 29, and Blaize Lehane, 32, who both worked at the now closed Goff + Rosenthal in the mid-2000s, partnered in January in Ramiken Crucible, a gallery originally founded in 2009 by Mr. Egan in an illegal Lower East Side basement. Liv Tyler and the artist Terence Koh showed up once to hear the funereal songs of Salem, a Michigan band with a devoted downtown following. Now aboveground and next door to a liquor store on Chinatown’s fringe, Mr. Egan and Mr. Lehane seem to delight in thumbing their noses at the so-called art intelligentsia.

“As an art dealer, you should spit on history, wipe it away and find something new,” Mr. Egan said.

The duo’s taste tends toward the comically subversive. Ramiken Crucible’s new show, “Stud,” featuring the artist Gavin Kenyon, is composed of a large-scale cast-iron axe with a bulbous handle that resembles a fleshy limb. And this summer, they exhibited “Vandal Lust” by Andra Ursuta, a 10-foot catapult made of wood and cardboard flanked by a replica of the artist’s lifeless body after being hurled into a wall.

Mr. Egan began representing Ms. Ursuta, whom he is now dating, after she sent him an unsolicited e-mail asking him to check out her Web site. “Every artist is scraping by, trying to get some attention for their work,” he said.

Mr. Egan studied at New York’s School of Visual Arts; Mr. Lehane has a computer science degree from Boston University. Together, they project a kind of us-against-the-world image. “There is almost an energy, anger even, between us,” Mr. Lehane said.

Kate Werble Gallery

When Kate Werble opened a space to show art in West SoHo two weeks before the financial collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, she was given a sage piece of advice: “People said you have to put at least one artist up on your Web site,” she said. So she listed John Lehr, a photographer whose work has shown at the Museum of Modern Art, and whom she had met years earlier while organizing a group show for a friend. Months later, she got a second piece of advice: “People said you can’t really represent just one artist.”

Those were tough days. But Ms. Werble, 31, took her time picking artists and now represents a stable of nine, including Mr. Lehr, a move that seems to have paid off. In December, she was awarded a top prize for curatorial presentation at the New Art Dealers Alliance show in Miami.

“Werble’s display stood out for the caliber of its assortment of artwork playing on the tradition of Minimalist art,” the art Web site Artinfo said then.

Unlike some gallerists who demand that only represented artists be promoted in-house, Ms. Werble had a more relaxed approach. “I wanted to use the space in a way that artists came together,” she said. During the lean early years, she invited two artists each month to show their work, a savvy business move, as some of them, like the conceptual artist Luke Stettner, stayed on. He has a solo exhibition at Ms. Werble’s gallery this month.

Last February, Ms. Werble held a solo show for Anna Betbeze, who teaches at Yale and applies dye and watercolor to wool rugs that are ripped, burned or cut until they resemble psychedelic animal hides. In May, one of Ms. Betbeze’s pieces was included alongside works by Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg in a show organized by the Palazzo Grassi, the Venice museum run by the foundation of the French billionaire François Pinault.

Ms. Werble lives with Christopher Chiappa, another artist she represents. But she is quick to point out that she shows no favoritism. “I love all my artists,” she said with a giggle. “I’d sleep with them all.”

Andy Valmorbida and

Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld

In a starry field, Mr. Valmorbida and Mr. Restoin Roitfeld are perhaps the most luminous. Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, who grew up in Paris, has a fan blog (I Want to Be a Roitfeld) that chronicles the goings-on of his high-profile family, including his sister, Julia. And Mr. Valmorbida has reportedly dated Lindsay Lohan and the supermodel Rachel Hunter.

After dabbling and dropping out of the movie business (Mr. Restoin Roitfeld) and finance (Mr. Valmorbida), each began consulting on and dealing in art. They joined forces in 2009 after the art dealer Rick Librizzi introduced them to the all-but-forgotten Mr. Hambleton, a contemporary, if not exactly a peer, of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Artists from the 1980s, the two surmised, were due for a comeback.

Mr. Hambleton “had refused to work with any dealer,” Mr. Restoin Roitfeld said, “so no one had done anything for him.”

They spent three months scouring galleries for his paintings, buying them at low prices that they hoped would rise once they began promoting Mr. Hambleton’s work.

Instead of starting their own gallery, though, the two decided to market the artist’s work with a series of glamorous global art parties in Milan, Moscow, London and Cannes, paid for by corporate sponsors and attended by many of their famous friends. Their two-year effort with Mr. Hambleton culminated in a Fashion Week soiree, sponsored by Giorgio Armani, and where they showed 55 of Mr. Hambleton’s paintings.

“Andy, come on, you have to go!” Mr. Restoin Roitfeld exclaimed impatiently that night to Mr. Valmorbida, as he dragged his colleague by the arm across the crowded gallery. A buyer was interested in “Horse & Rider, 2006,” which Mr. Valmorbida owned. For 10 minutes, the affable Mr. Valmorbida regaled the man with stories of the artist, waving his hands in the air, his body rocking with restless energy. Mr. Restoin Roitfeld watched with keen interest.

That night, collectors bought all 12 paintings that were for sale, with an average price of $75,000. “When we started, people laughed, saying, you need to start a gallery,” Mr. Valmorbida said. “But we never saw ourselves as part of the traditional art world.”

Laurel Gitlen

In 2005, Ms. Gitlen founded a contemporary art space in Portland, Ore., called Small A Projects, which had a loyal following. So when she moved to Manhattan three years later with her husband, Samuel Richardson, the head brewer at Greenpoint Beer Works in Brooklyn, many of the artists she had worked with in Portland agreed to join her at a new Broome Street gallery.

One of this ready group was Jessica Jackson Hutchins, who uses ceramic, old furniture and papier-mâché to create large-scale pieces, including “Couch for a Long Time,” which was included in the 2010 biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The two met when Ms. Hutchins called Ms. Gitlen and asked how to ship some sculpture. “Connections were easy to make in Portland,” Ms. Gitlen, 35, said. Later, she secured a studio visit after she ran into the artist at the grocery store. Ms. Hutchins’s work now sells for $7,000 to $50,000 and is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Another artist, the Richmond, Va.-based sculptor and performer Corin Hewitt, recently had a solo exhibition at the Whitney. Ms. Gitlen worked with him in 2007 when she exhibited his piece “Weavings,” for which he built an enclosed space that viewers could look inside and see the artist making sculpture and taking pictures. Ms. Gitlen introduced him to curators at the Seattle Art Museum, which in 2009 displayed the artist’s photographs from the performance.

A student of art history, Ms. Gitlen seeks strong relationships with museum curators. “I come from a curatorial background, so I am looking for artists who will have a place in the historical conversation,” she said.

But she prefers to remain mostly quiet, unlike in the 1980s when art dealers like Mary Boone were often more controversial than the artists they represented. “These days, I don’t know if you want to have a personality or you want the gallery to have it,” Ms. Gitlen said.

Rachel Uffner Gallery

Rachel Uffner, 33, has hit most of the art world’s marks. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in art history and painting, she earned a coveted job at Christie’s. After that she worked for a private collector and, in 2003, joined the D’Amelio Terras gallery in Chelsea, where she tended the front-desk phones. By the mid-2000s, she had worked her way up to become gallery director. Ms. Uffner even wanted to be an artist at one point. “But I never had the rigor of spending the day in the studio by myself,” she said. “I liked being out with other people.”

So she started her own gallery, with pieces that cost mostly $3,000 to $10,000. “I do like being the conduit between two worlds,” she said.

In 2007, she saw the plaster and paper works of the little-known Hilary Harnischfeger in a contemporary art journal and tracked her down. Ms. Uffner courted her after leaving D’Amelio Terras and signed her the summer before she started her gallery, where Ms. Harnischfeger has already had two solo shows. Ms. Uffner’s first exhibition, in 2008, featured Roger White, the painter, writer and co-founder of the journal Paper Monument, and was scheduled within days of the Lehman Brothers collapse. “People were comfortable spending in the hundreds of dollars, not thousands,” she said. “I thought I would go back to school and become a dentist.”

She scheduled a second show for Mr. White last year, and his works sold out. Ms. Uffner also represents the conceptual artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty, whose work is now in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Whitney.

“Artists and their art dealers are a lot like kids and parents who have weird dynamics,” Ms. Greenberger Rafferty said at the September opening of her new show. “But we are the same generation. I never feel sheepish about saying what I think. At a more established gallery, you are lower on the totem pole.”

to view original article, click here

Opening Reception February 7, 2012, 6 – 9PM

560 Washington St, Gate 37 E

Exhibition open to public from February 8 – 19