Gallery Economics
by Jerry Stein
With the US economy tanking nearly 40% last year, Greater Cincinnati art galleries haven't been exempt from the serious downturn.
Randy Sandler, owner of Cincinnati Art Galleries, estimates that business at his downtown gallery is off 50 percent since the stock market crash in September 2008. Marta Hewett said sales at her art glass gallery in East Walnut Hills have "dropped off by 33 percent."
Galleries, such as Carl Solway's and Sandler's, are responding to the crisis by selling art in venues outside their gallery walls. Others are reducing marketing costs, dropping art prices and pulling back on the number of exhibitions they schedule.
And the owners of the A & J Gallery over in Kentucky have radically rethought their entire art business to make their business more stable.
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I recall a professor of sculpture recounting with joy her first realization that Donovan's Haze, 2005 was in fact composed of transparent plastic drinking straws. The revelatory experience of the materials was the most important aspect for her, given her perspective as an artist; her small hands lovingly gesticulated in the air as if such movements would aid in understanding Donovan's straw-wall.
Were one to pass too quickly through Rebecca Seeman's solo installation project Stellar Attraction (on view at the Art Academy of Cincinnati's Pearlman Gallery from January 16-February 13, 2009), one risks drawing conclusions about the works presented that are but half-truths and cursory readings. Objects made from steel, aluminum, black rubber, and drawings in white ink on black paper do not reveal their full nature quickly. The artist dared discretion in their making, without relying on strong color, monumental scale, or trendy recognizable content to convince the viewer to continue communing with the installation. Perhaps that is one of the most important lessons drawn from these works: the experiences of these sculptural forms are not static like one might presume, but, as critic and poet Wayne Koestenbaum has said on the topic, if you continue looking, "things will start to happen." Rebecca Seeman has produced a quiet exhibition, the result of which might call for more hushed awe within the contemporary landscape.
