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THE FAIREST OF THE FAIR CATHERINE D. ANSPON PROFILES FOUR GAME-CHANGING NATIONAL AND TEXAS GALLERISTS WHOM YOU'LL SEE NEXT MONTH AT THE DALLAS ART FAIR. THEN CATCH AN INSIDER FORECAST ON A PAIR OF PIONEERING DEALERS FROM ACROSS THE POND. (CALENDAR THESE DATES: DALLAS ART FAIR 2012: PREVIEW GALA THURSDAY, APRIL 12; FAIR DATES FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY, APRIL 13 THROUGH 15, AT FASHION INDUSTRY GALLERY, IN THE HEART OF THE DALLAS ARTS DISTRICT.) of course. Gallery history in brief? Feature opened in Chicago in '84; after 10 years of working with not-for-profit artists spaces, moved to NYC (SoHo) in '88, then to another location in SoHo in '94 and became Feature Inc. [We] resistantly migrated to Chelsea (25th Street) in '94 and then happily fled Chelsea for NYC's Lower East Side in 2007. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND FEATURE INC., NYC COURTESY DASHA ZHUKOVA AND FOTOFEST Established? 1984, April 1. By design, JUDY LINN HUDSON, FEATURE INC., NEW YORK CITY How does this Fair compare to others in which you participate? Well, this will be my first visit, so I can't answer that until a bit after it is over. How will you curate your booth at this year's Dallas Art Fair? I choose one piece [that] feels right — the David Deutsch painting I sent you an image of — and playfully and intuitively build out from there. I don't have an agenda. How has the art world changed since you started? The scale has increased several hundredfold. One used to be able to grasp it, but now that is impossible. There are many, many art worlds. The most dramatic change, however, has been the shift from aesthetics to business — a bad idea, in my opinion. How you got started? As a child, I was involved with making art, ditto in high school. Went to art school, then to reg university, got degrees in art education, MFA in painting, worked administratively for free in artists' orgs, danced professionally, managed dance company, made my living as a performance artist, became disgruntled with the artists' org's need to use peer-panel review process for programming decisions, etc., as it watered down and limited the end result, so I went for autonomy and opened my own gallery. I felt there I could push the boundaries faster, more often and more easily, and the field seemed to need that. Artists' spaces were backing off of the front line, the activity and interest was moving to galleries ... generally small galleries that were being responsive to living artists. Above: Hudson, Feature Inc. (detail of portrait by Judy Linn) Left: David Deutsch's Untitled, 2008, at Feature Inc. "IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST ENCHANTING MOMENTS I HAD EVER EXPERIENCED IN MY CAREER ..." — Leo Koenig on his exhibition featuring The Gelatin Institute Biggest break? Being born with eyes that perceive what they are looking at. Most meaningful art experience to date? I don't have any specific special experience; it is more categorical — 45 years of living in and around and through refined levels of creativity. Describe your stable? We like our personal connection to what we do, enjoy an adventure, love our materials and respect our skills but aren't fussy. Like the brain and the body, [we] have some kind of subtle mystical or spiritual thread that has a connection to both science and social concerns, and we tend to like to blur boundaries. One critic, in a review of one of the gallery's large group exhibitions, recently labeled Feature Inc.'s house style as "Voodoo Realism." Why are you exhibiting in the 2012 Dallas Art Fair? Simply, a large percentage of business has moved from the galleries to the fairs, and I am finally needing to confront that reality. I did lots of fairs back in the '90s but stopped by the late '90s, as it was COURTESY THE ARTIST AND FEATURE INC., NYC Leo Koenig in his eponymous gallery with Ed Ruscha's Long, Stormy, 1995 COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JONATHAN VINER GALLERY, LONDON Where do you find new talent? There is no set way to discover artists; schmoozing is the most obvious, but still unsolicited document review can work or has worked for me a number of times. Years ago, an artist called the gallery and said they were bringing by some paintings for me to see. I told them not to, yet they still did, and it led to [my] representing them. There are studio visits, visiting art schools, art fairs, recommendations from friends and artists, studio crawls ... LEO KOENIG, LEO KOENIG INC., NEW YORK CITY Established? 1999. COURTESY LEON KOENIG INC., NYC What is the current art vibe in the Lower East Side? The vibe on the Lower East Side is easygoing, casual, friendly and diverse on many levels. Thankfully the neighborhood has an identity that is not dependent on the galleries — it is just one of many things that goes down here. Lower East Side businesses are typically small by design and run by an individual with a personal investment in their opinion or style, and [an] interest to create alternatives. consistently just too toxic an endeavor. As to the crashed economy, I again need to do fairs, and so I am being highly selective and trying to choose ones that have a personal and friendly scale. Above: Nancy Shaver's Energy, 2011, at Feature Inc. Left: Dan Rees' Artex Painting, 2011, at Jonathan Viner Gallery MARCH | PAGE 20 | 2012 Gallery history in brief? The gallery started in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a series of shows by emerging artists and established masters. Within a year, it moved to Manhattan, first to a space in Tribeca, then — after September 11, 2001 — to Centre Street in SoHo, where we were for four years. In 2005, we opened a new space on 23rd in Chelsea. It is important to us that an artist's work be seen in an appropriate context, so the gallery has been dedicated to producing catalogs with scholarly essays and limitededition artist books. How you got started? I moved to New York from Germany out of high school and started interning at David Zwirner's gallery. After a few months and with the encouragement of some close friends — many of whom would become artists in the gallery's stable — I decided I wanted to be my own boss and just went for it. Biggest break? I am fortunate enough to have had a couple of big breaks as an art dealer. When I opened my first space, I presented an artist, Aidas Bareikis, who made a massive, difficult installation for the first show. I sold the work in its entirety, which allowed me to continue and pay the rent and steeled my commitment to becoming a gallerist. Later, I did an exchange curatorial project with the legendary dealer and friend John Weber where I installed Erik Parker, Sarah Braman and Michael Tong in John's space and organized a number of artworks from his inventory — including Sol LeWitt and Michael Heizer — into an exhibition at my Williamsburg space. In the early 2000s, I negotiated the sale of George Baselitz's collection and castle in Derneburg to a private collector, who in turn is in the process of transforming the latter into a center for art and education. Most recently, the gallery mounted an exhibition of photoworks by Sigmar Polke — the second exhibition of such work in the United States and the fourth in history. Most meaningful art experience to date? The Tantamounter show with Gelatin. The artist group Gelatin built, for lack of a better word, a trailer inside the gallery taking up most of the front space. For one week, the group — along with a guest artist and their personal "therapist" — locked themselves inside the trailer with a massive amount of materials, paint, paper, pens, stuffed animals, various sundry, you name it. During this week, people could come by the gallery at any time of day or night and drop an item into a chute. After some time went by, the person would get their item along with a handmade "copy" of it. It was one of the most enchanting moments