9 New Galleries That Opened in New York City in 2017

Don’t focus on the closings. Three cheers for new galleries!

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Image: OLSEN GRUIN installed with its summer show, Wesley Martin Berg and Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri (courtesy OLSEN GRIUIN)

Art galleries are kind of like restaurants. It’s a hard business, and although it’s always sad when one closes (especially after many years serving the neighborhood), when a new one opens, it brings new promise. While 2017 saw the closing of venues like Envoy Enterprises, CRG Gallery, and Sandra Gering Inc., it also witnessed the opening of several brand new galleries in New York City. Here are a few of them [extract]

TV Moore - Double Take: Anne Landa Award 2009

TV Moore - Double Take: Anne Landa Award 2009

The Olsen Gruin Gallery, Manhattan, New York

Olsen Gruin is a contemporary art gallery in New York featuring established and emerging Australian and international artists.

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‘If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere...'

As the song goes, if you can make it in New York, especially in the competitive world of art dealing and gallery proprietorship, then you really have made it.

To then take it to the next level and successfully remain there takes precise planning mixed with boundless enthusiasm, talent, charm and commitment. And that's exactly what Aussies Tim Olsen and Emerald Gruin, the savvy proprietors of the Manhattan Art Gallery the ‘OLSEN GRUIN' have in abundance.

ART REVIEW: Tim Olsen

Two prominent gallerists share their views on contemporary art and their own personal collections.

Tim Olsen is a leading galleriest in Australia, running Olsen Gallery, Olsen Annexe and Limited in Sydney's Woollahra. Born into the arts dynastically, he is the son of the great painter John Olsen. He recently launched Olsen Gruin gallery in New York - taking Australian art international.

Gilded History | Paul Davies

Australian artist Paul Davies reveals the genesis of his series of artworks linking 19th-century gold rushes in California and Australian with modern-day Los Angeles

The rebirth of coo: reconsidering the pigeon - in pictures

Australian photographer Leila Jeffreys focuses on diversity within bird species, and these wildly colourful portraits belie the lowly reputation of the pigeon.

Nicobar Pigeon These striking portraits of the pigeons and doves of New Guinea and Australia form part of Leila Jeffreys’ current exhibition, Ornithurae Volume 1, at Olsen Gruin, New York, until 12 November. The captions below are from an accompanying essay, Reconsider the Pigeon, by biologist Tim Low. All photographs: Leila Jeffreys 

Taronga Zoo bird display puts visitors 'up close and personal' with endangered species

Visitors to Taronga Zoo over the next month are likely to be confronted by an unusual exhibition as they meander between enclosures.

Giant images of 10 birds, some of them endangered, will be scattered at key points around the zoo as part of an inaugural QBE Muse exhibition aimed at highlighting the beautiful intricacy of a species that is too often missed in the zoo and in the wild.

Image: Taronga Zoo bird keeper Brendan Host holds Griffin the sooty owl with an image of the bird taken by photographic artist Leila Jefferys. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Paul Davies in Los Angeles

The MAK Centre for Art and Architecture West Hollywood and This x That (who dedicates to bringing architecture and design to broader audiences) present a site-specific installation by artist Paul Davies at the Fitzpatrick-Leland House in Los Angeles.

Big Apple Impact

Australian birdlife was also ruffling feathers in New York last week when Sydney gallery owner Tim Olsen had a star-studded cast turn up for the launch of artist Leila Jeffreys' extraordinary bird portraits at his Manhattan gallery Olsen Gruin, which has made quite an impact on the Big Apple art scene in just a few short months.

Image: Brooke Shields with Tim Olsen and Emerald Gruin in New York. Photo: Supplied

Head to head Tim Storrier v McLean Edwards in Australia's richest art prize

The two paintings he entered, of film maker Warwick Thornton and a self-portrait, were selected as semi-finalists. The self-portrait made it into the finalists, as did Tim Storrier’s portrait of Edwards, both vying to win $150,000 this week in Australia’s richest art prize.

Brooke Sheilds Manhattan Townhouse

Brooke Sheilds' Manhattan Townhouse. 
The actress decorates with style and substance.

Feathering her nest - Skye the Cockatoo - one of several large scale bird photos by Shields's friend Australian artist Leila Jeffreys on display - watches over the kitchen...

Leila Jeffreys - Ornithurae

OLSEN GRUIN is pleased to present “Ornithurae” a new selection of work by the Australian artist, photographer and environmentalist Leila Jeffreys.

Jeffreys has photographed native birds in her home country and the US (she was personally invited to shoot at Ojai Raptor Center, a sanctuary for wounded birds in California). Her unique work has featured everything from budgies to eagles; wrens to pigeons; cockatoos to hawks.

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Olsen Gruin and Brooke Shields invite you to the opening of
LEILA JEFFREYS
ORNITHURAE VOLUME 1
Opening: Friday 13 October, 5–8pm
Exhibition continues until 12th November

Best New Art Spaces to Visit This Fall

Opened in New York’s Nolita neighborhood in March 2017, this gallery is a collaboration between Tim Olsen, a former Sydney-based gallerist, Emerald Gruin and her partner, Adrian, who were previously involved with Rox Gallery that shuttered its Lower East Side space in 2014. Their roster of artists includes some of Australia’s biggest contemporary exports, including TV Moore, George Byrne and Leila Jeffreys, along with American artists such as KOAK. Their venue is also a platform for contemporary Aboriginal artists to reach U.S. markets, and they recently held a group show organized by Adam Knight, vice president of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, featuring 15 artists. The gallery is presenting new works by Sydney-born, L.A.-based photographer George Byrne this fall.

George Byrnes New Order Photographs Idealize LA Light

The clean lines and colorful, minimal shapes in George Byrne’s photographs belie the busy, messy time in Los Angeles that led to their making. The Australian-born Byrne arrived in the city in 2010, after years of traveling. “I was personally in a very strange place when I got here,” he says. “No idea what I was doing with my life.”

Art Talk | George Byrnes

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George Byrne's photographic work makes my heart skip a beat. Using the urban Los Angeles landscape as his canvas, George captures forms and colour into unique compositions so they have an incredible alchemy and depth. His latest exhibition, NEW ORDER, includes twelve new works, capturing new compositions of color and geometric forms on the streets of LA - once again taking the ordinary and turning it into something extraordinary.

Art Talk | Stephen Ormandy

Stephen Ormandy has a way with colour. His bold and graphic paintings are strongly influenced by the natural world with a focus on colour and organic forms. His large scale oil paintings and cultural work are a synergy of line, shape and surface all working beautifully in harmony. For Stephen, colour is ''pure joy'' and his latest exhibition at the Olsen Gruin gallery is no exception.

Stephen Ormandy

OLSEN GRUIN NEW YORK 

Six hard-edged paintings of curvy forms by the Australian artist and designer, who is making his New York solo début, evoke otherworldly figures and landscapes.

Laura Jones | A Diary of a Changing Reef

Laura brings to life her experience of witnessing the Great Barrier Reef’s changing conditions, how she learnt to use her art as a form of activism and how she worked alongside science to interpret and bring attention to the problems that our planet is facing.

GEORGE BYRNE | JONES MAGAZINE

Wesley Martin Berg and Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri

The sad-clown painting functions as a sort of postmodern joke: an ironic gesture that dives into bad taste while subtly nodding to art history—the clown’s origins can be traced back to the stock character Pierrot of the commedia dell’arte, after all. Wesley Martin Berg’s paintings of clowns are informed by this tradition, but he also imbues his subjects with a solemn grace.