143 Reade is a private gallery in a residential building in Tribeca.
“Around the Corner
Four Painters Living in Tribeca:
Hermine Ford, Joanne Greenbaum, Paul Pagk, Gary Stephan”
September 18th – December 9th, 2012
By appointment
The first exhibition organized by Lucien Terras in the gallery of 143 Reade Street pays homage to the artists who have long lived and worked in Tribeca. For decades, Tribeca has offered spacious lofts to a number of artists, a shield from the busy traffic of nearby Soho, and great light from its proximity to the river. The artists implantation occurred before the neighborhood’s transformation into one of the most exclusive residential areas of Manhattan. Tribeca has been and continues to be a home to many famous artists including Richard Serra, Marisol, Robert Wilson and Mary Heilmann. But over the years, many artists have been forced to move to other parts of the city and more often to other boroughs. In that respect, artists who are still located in Tribeca – be it because they had purchased their lofts early on or are still protected by the loft laws – testify to a different era of the metropolitan area.
Hermine Ford, Joanne Greenbaum, Paul Pagk, and Gary Stephan respectively moved into the lofts they still occupy and work from today in 1976, 1990, 1988 and 1974. The stability of their studio situation has allowed these artists to pursue and mature their work at their own pace, without the pressure of trends and the necessity to force works into storage when moving. The energy and concentration of a life of work is felt when one enters their studio space as they have all enjoyed the good fortune of a stable situation and successes in their careers.
The title “Around the Corner” additionally alludes to the different practices of abstraction presented in their works: the shaped canvases of Hermine Ford, the evocation of architectural space in Joanne Greenbaum and Paul Pagk works, and the discontinuity of forms in Gary Stephan’s. The four artists have exhibited widely in the United States and abroad and their work is represented in many public collections.
Hermine Ford has recently completed a commission for the new wing of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. Her first solo exhibition in New York was at Artist’s Space in 1976.
Joanne Greenbaum’s recent solo exhibitions include D’Amelio Terras, New York and Nicolas Krupp Gallery, Basel, Switzerland and an upcoming solo exhibition at greengrassi gallery in London, UK. A mid-career survey was organized in 2008 by Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland and was accompanied by a monograph published by Hatje Cantz.
Paul Pagk has recently exhibited work in a group exhibition at Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York titled “Surface Affect.” His work is currently on view in “Line and Planes” at McKenzie Fine Art, New York. Pagk has been showing his work internationally since the mid-eighties.
Gary Stephan’s first solo exhibition in New York was in 1970 at David Whitney Gallery. Over the years he has exhibited with leading American galleries such as Marlborough Gallery, Mary Boone Gallery, New York, and Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles. He currently has a solo show of works on paper at Devening Projects and Editions in Chicago. His work is in the collection of major museums around the United States and in New York including the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
