Talking shop with Andrea Smith

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 11 / December 6 - 12, 2006

Courtesy ZieherSmith

Mike Womack, detail of “Warbling” installation at ZieherSmith Gallery

By Shane McAdams

Several years ago I was gallery hopping on a warm Thursday evening in spring with a more mature friend and art world regular. We entered ZieherSmith’s storefront space at 533 W. 25th Street when she went looking for a glass of white wine. To her dismay all they had was Pabst Blue Ribbon cans. She was nonplussed but took the drink begrudgingly and drank it down along with the realization that something in the art world was starting to tip in a new direction.

Scott Zieher and Andrea Smith opened ZieherSmith in Spring of 2003 and have quickly garnered a reputation as being one of Chelsea’s sexiest new art galleries. The gallery joined the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) in 2006, and, along with pioneers such as Zach Feuer, Becky Smith, and John Connelly, has made waves in Chelsea’s ocean of blue chip stalwarts.

This emergence of a new young guard in Chelsea is the result of certain galleries and individuals taking advantage of their connection to the direct sources of new art. While the older galleries were settling into a comfort zone over the recent past, showing the same members of the artistic pantheon month after month, galleries like ZieherSmith seized an opportunity to present a more youthful scene, with daring art from names we hadn’t yet heard of.

ZieherSmith maintains this perspective without succumbing to the general criticism of being a gallery of slackers and trouble-making scenesters merely capitalizing on their youth. If you need any more than my word, stop by the gallery and check out Mike Womack’s phenomenologically mind-blowing installation of periscopic mirrors drawing their reflective imagery from agglomerations of popular junk from a reliquary in the back of the gallery. Confused by the description? You should be; it needs to be seen to be appreciated.

On the eve of her departure for the NADA Art Fair in Miami, I had a chance to rack the brain of NADA president and ZieherSmith partner Andrea Smith to see what she’s been thinking about in the art world and beyond.

Arthur Dove & Early American Abstraction

With a background in American art studies, I find myself often drawing parallels between our young artists’ new work and the bold experiments of the early American abstractionists (pre-WWI, that is, not Abstract Expressionists). Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, and Arthur Dove seem particularly relevant, and I’m not the only one dropping their names. Start looking for references in articles and reviews, and you will see them everywhere (including some tips of where to see choice examples of the originals).

Mike Womack

In one of the most ambitious solo debuts we’ve shown, or perhaps even seen, Mike Womack has blown us away with his piece, “Warbling,” currently on view at the gallery. The experience can only be marred by a pale description, so I’ll be vague about this piece that melds the experience of painting, sculpture, and digital media into one exquisitely hand-crafted installation. It’s a vague, fantastical landscape shattered and reconfigured into a disintegrating geometric abstraction. That’s not just artspeak, but you have to see for yourself.

Farwell, trans fats

So, trans fats are all but banned from New York, and I am left worried about the future of Krispy Kreme and personal responsibility. That said, when the smoking ban was announced, I thought New York would never be the same, despite being a non-smoker. And now, I relish my smoke-free hair and clothes after an evening out, and I delicately cough when visiting establishments in my native Midwestern city. Is Bloomberg saving me from yet another health evil or taking away the need to think for myself?

Fessing Up

While all those things have been on my mind recently, I must confess that at this moment, I am, in reality, completely consumed by the art fairs in Miami. I am writing this from Florida just hours after the exciting opening of the New Art Dealers Alliance Art Fair, which was a benefit to sponsor the New Museum of Contemporary Art and NADA’s educational programming. Many people do not know that NADA is a non-for-profit business association that sponsors educational and social events for the public and its dealer members throughout the year. Coming up in January, check out 8 consecutive issues of the “L” Magazine for the NADA emerging artist page and sign up for NADA’s email announcements at www.newartdealers.org.

ZieherSmith is at 533 W. 25th Street, 212-229-1088, ZieherSmith.com. Reach Shane McAdams at mcadamsshane@hotmail.com.