While I was teaching an MFA seminar at PAFA last semester, I took the class to artist-run gallery Tiger Strikes Asteroid for a talk by founding member Alexis Granwell. Granwell told the students how the gallery works and explained why running a gallery can be a good option for young artists, especially if the type of work that interests them isn’t already being shown in their town.
“Starting a gallery gives a group of artists an opportunity to attract the like-minded and develop a new community,” Granwell told the students, many of whom will be graduating this spring and heading back to their hometowns across the country. But the artists of TSA also believe that opening branches of the gallery in different communities can help expand their opportunities beyond Philadelphia. Currently they have outposts in Bushwick and LA and hope to open one in Berlin.
“Does Not Follow,” a show of paintings by new TSA member Will DiBello, was on view during our visit. His large-scale abstractions “explore the parallels between the language and processes of painting and the inherent structures, color and light of digital displays and print matrixes.”
Thanks, Alexis, for meeting with us!
UPDATE (January 6, 2015): Some of the students who attended the gallery visit have decided to open a gallery in a space next to Tiger Strikes Asteroid. They are raising money for ladders, lightbulbs, projectors and so forth through an Indiegogo campaign. Check it out here and support them if you can.
Related posts:
The square line: Jukkala and Rosenthal in Philadelphia (2010)
Places to go (2009)
——
Two Coats of Paint is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. For permission to use content beyond the scope of this license, permission is required.
what is the type of work that interests them that isn't already being shown in their town? what is the specific concept of the gallery that they created and how are they all like-minded?
thanks,
linda dubin garfield