In Brooklyn and Chicago, apartment galleries are everywhere. They get reviewed in the paper, even the ones that last only a year. But they are a necessity: Young artists and curators in big cities can’t afford to pay rent on an apartment and a storefront both. In
St. Louis, space—of most any kind—is cheap, so there’s been no reason for them. Yet, suddenly, domestic art spaces have been springing up like fairy mushroom rings.
In Benton Park West, Cosign Projects (which opened in 2009) uses the exterior of a brick two-family flat to show outdoor exhibits like Leeza Meksin’s “House Coat,” a huge swath of white spandex, printed with linked gold chains, that was wrapped around the building in March. Last summer, curators Dana Turkovic and Daniel McGrath unveiled Isolation Room, a white-box space constructed inside their apartment, featuring one or two works per exhibit. And in October, Cole Root and Francesca Wilmott opened Los Caminos, an apartment gallery in the most traditional sense. Located on the second floor of a building on Cherokee Street, it’s got shiny black floors, white plaster walls, huge beveled windows, a visible kitchen, and a brown couch and wooden coffee table that get moved in and out of the main exhibition space as needed. Its first exhibit, “Perfectly F—ed Up For You,” a solo show by L.A. artist RJ Messineo, featured sculptures made of cut-up and reassembled window screens and latticework that echoed the work of Gordon Matta-Clark.
“RJ was a freebie out-of-town artist,” says Wilmott. “She’s from L.A., and she only lived here for a year.” She adds that she and Root work hard to include artists from other cities, “to put St. Louis in that larger context.” But back to the local: Why apartment galleries in St. Louis, where space and money aren’t an issue?
“The reality in St. Louis is, to run a storefront space, there’s not really the market to support it,” Root says, “and I’m not sure it’s something either one of us is ready to do, anyway.”
“There’s less risk,” Wilmott agrees. “If we close tomorrow, we haven’t made the financial investment.” But more important, when it comes to the work itself, “you can take a lot more risk.” And so can the artists, including established ones who are looking for a safe place to experiment with new work.
The pair is also hoping to inspire other people to do what they’re doing. To that end, they produced a stapled, photocopied text, “Apartment Gallery 101,” made up of simultaneously serious and tongue-in-cheek lists, complete with boxes to check off. Under “Random Things to Keep Under the Sink,” for instance, they list duct tape, Gorilla Glue, breath mints, Post-it notes to “stick beneath the area you’re drilling into to catch the drywall dust,” and “good booze (for after the opening).” There is also a reading list with titles like Jerry Saltz’s Seeing Out Louder, Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, and Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience.
That bibliography was assembled by Wilmott, who recently moved back from Chicago after attending the Art Institute and co-directing an apartment gallery, Concertina. Root, the acting exhibitions manager at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, has curated shows all over the city, including at Snowflake/Citystock, PSTL Gallery, Boots Contemporary Art Space, and Hoffman-LaChance Contemporary. Though they are curating for a small, domestic space, their approach is as serious and exacting as it would be in a public gallery or museum. For the March exhibit, “Brookhart Jonquil: Physical Spectrum,” the show required the installation of drywall over plaster and the removal of a piece of baseboard molding, among other things.
But no matter how carefully they attend to details, the pair say they’ve come to anticipate factors out of their control—like snow. So far, three of Los Caminos’ openings have happened during snowstorms—though they happily report every show has attracted 100-plus people. “We don’t know for sure because we haven’t invested in a clicker yet,” Root laughs. Jonquil came to St. Louis a week before the opening to install “Physical Spectrum,” but had to go back to Chicago to teach. He left his car here, and took the train back.
“And he had two very important things to do in Chicago besides teach,” Root says. One was to print Biosphere Light Structure, a large digitally altered photograph of the Biosphere 2 structure in Arizona (he added a giant floating crystal in the middle of the dome’s interior). The other was to laser-cut a letter A for another piece: the word AMBULANCE, written backward in mirrored letters and embedded in drywall—which he was going to do at the Art Institute of Chicago.
“But he got back to Chicago, there was an insane blizzard, and for the first time in like 15 years, the schools in Chicago closed,” Root says. “Which never happens.”
“And his train got cancelled,” Wilmott adds, “So some friends drove him here!”
After all that, though, they still say they really weren’t feeling too sentimental about taking the exhibit down after it closed in
mid-March.
“It’s a totally different experience, living with the art around,” Root says. “I did like this show a lot, but it’s always nice to see things change out.”
“An apartment gallery gives you a chance to collapse your professional and your personal life,” Wilmott agrees. “As a result, the space is going to change and evolve with the changes in your life.”
In May, the gallery features the work of St. Louis photographer Dave Johnson and Chicago painter Dominic Paul Moore (co-director of apartment gallery Ebersmoore). Dates were not set at press time; call or visit the website for more information. Los Caminos, 2649 Cherokee, 314-341-9827, loscaminosart.com.
