Moti Hasson moves up, opens storefront gallery in Chelsea

Moti Hasson gallery staff from left, Tairone Bastien, Candice Madey, and Moti Hasson. Pictured in the background is Kerstin Brätsch’s untitled installation work (right) and Xylor Jane’s untitled work, both 2007.

By Stephanie Murg

A little over two years ago, Moti Hasson woke up and didn’t want to go to work. He decided that he would rather start an art gallery. Today, he is at the helm of a shimmering new 4,000-square-foot, street-level space in Chelsea that just opened a group show headlined by breakout star Shinique Smith. The gallery, on W. 25th St. between 10th and 11th Aves., is in the shadow of French artist Patrick Mimran’s winking billboard that reads, “Contemporary art is a discourse always explained but never understood.” Hasson is a quick study.

“I don’t know if it’s a mid-life crisis,” says Hasson, 43, of his decision to trade in a successful career as a diamond dealer for a go at the art world, where clarity and color are not so objectively measured. “Some guys run away and get remarried. I just did a gallery. I decided that the second part of my life was going to be in the arts and what I love.”

Born in Israel, Hasson’s earliest memories of art involve visits to the studio of his aunt, a painter. After high school in New Jersey and a stint in the Israeli army, he settled in New York and began collecting art as a hobby in the mid-1990s. “My first purchase was a $400 drawing,” he says. “And then once I started, I couldn’t stop. Soon, more than half my income would go into buying art.”

The move from collector to gallerist was motivated by Hasson’s desire to get closer to artists. “I felt that as a patron of the arts, it would be better for me, mentally and emotionally, if I was representing artists versus just collecting them,” he says.

Collecting served as a sort of art history crash course for Hasson, but when he made the decision to open a gallery, he knew that he needed help. For curatorial expertise, he looked to Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), which focuses exclusively on the study of art and exhibition practices since the 1960s, and immersed himself in the contemporary art world.

Still, Hasson knew he couldn’t just set up shop in Chelsea and hope for the best. He began in a small space on W. 38th St. and focused on assembling a solid team — of artists as well as staff. Tairone Bastien, a CCS graduate and now a co-director of Moti Hasson Gallery, was one of Hasson’s first hires. “I was attracted by the small size of the gallery,” says Bastien. “I like the idea of starting something new and being involved on the ground level. And it was nice to start outside of Chelsea. We were able to experiment and do our own thing.”

The gallery steadily assembled an international roster of artists, including Frances Trombly, a Miami-based artist whose use of textiles and weaving encourages the viewer to look closer at seemingly familiar objects (think crocheted confetti and fabric made to resemble looseleaf paper), and Shirley Shor, a new media artist who will have a solo show at The Jewish Museum in March.

Austrian-born Zipora Fried, who inscribes the surfaces of her large, labor-intensive works in rhythmic rows of graphite lines that seem to buzz with electricity, is one of the newer additions to Hasson’s stable. “Moti was aware of my work and wrote to me introducing himself and his program, and I felt there was something fresh in their approach,” says Fried, who first met with Hasson last fall when he visited her studio along with Bastien and co-director Candice Madey. “We had a great conversation about the process of making art and the process of dealing with art and the side of the curators.”

Months of such conversations and studio visits are to thank for the diverse, impressive lineup of 16 works featured in “Beyond the Pale,” the group show that inaugurates the gallery’s massive new location, which opened last week in the center of the Chelsea art world. “I think we’ve done more studio visits than anyone in New York over the last few months,” says Madey, who joined the gallery last March. “So we really have an idea of the pulse of what’s happening now.”

Featuring the work of eight artists, all but one of them based in New York City, “Beyond the Pale” places the colorful abstract canvases of Paul Pagk alongside Shinique Smith’s “David (desaturated),” a twine-cinched bundle of plaster-caked clothing that gives the impression of Michelangelo’s masterpiece having come to life only to have had an unfortunate run-in with a trash compactor. A trio of photographs by Clifford Owens, depicting a little Fluxus-inspired fun with whipped cream, hang a few feet from Tommy Hartung’s “Raw File Dump,” a sculptural work of found objects that take on a devotional monumentality by virtue of their altar-like arrangement. The viewer is left to make wonderful sense of it all.

“‘Beyond the Pale’ suggests operating outside the standards, being outside of what is accepted, and I think that all of the artists in the show do that,” says Madey. “Nothing is easy in this show,” adds Bastien. “And I think that in order to then understand the work you have to take a leap of faith.”

Hasson and his gallery staff understand leaps of faith. When asked about his goals for the gallery in the next year, Bastien’s first response was, “Being able to stay. Surviving in Chelsea would be nice.”

Next up for Moti Hasson Gallery is a solo exhibition by Pagk, a mid-career artist whose lush Lexicon series viewers can get a taste of in the current group show. “What inspires my painting is painting,” says Pagk. “Its multiple layers of thought and its complexities.” Opening February 21, the solo show in the new, larger space will enable Pagk to present two bodies of work: about six large oil paintings that date from 2002 through 2005 as well as selection of smaller works from the Lexicon series. “The space hasn’t changed my way of painting or thinking,” says Pagk. “What it has done is help me to show the work that I am doing in a beautiful way.”

While promoting and showing the gallery’s artists, Hasson and his team are also focused on searching for new ones. “We’re really unique in the way that we reply to every artist that submits [work to us],” says Hasson, who has some experience with finding diamonds, in the rough and otherwise. “Once the submission box fills up, I sift through, and I write notes to each person.” Those that he deems potentially interesting are reviewed by the staff as a team.

“For me, it’s been an eye-opening experience, an incredible two-year ride,” says Hasson, who is particularly excited about the gallery’s recent acceptance to México Arte Contemporáneo (MACO), an international art fair in Mexico City this April. But there is more work to be done. “Our goal is to really focus on the program and to show important work—what we conceive to be important work,” says Hasson. “We’re really young and superambitious. I think we’re showing tomorrow’s stars. There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s what we’re doing here.”

Artist Fried, for one, is optimistic. “Moti’s new space is one of the top 10 spaces in Chelsea,” she says. “There are many surprises to come, I’m sure.”

Moti Hasson is located at 535 W. 25th St., 212-268-4444, www.motihasson.com. “Beyond the Pale” runs through Feb. 17.