“They come from all over the world to suck up art,” explained sculptor Robert Lobe, referring to the collectors who descend upon New York in the fall auction season. “On Sunday and Monday, they don’t have any place to go. West Broadway Gallery is tailored for that need — like for alcoholics who need liquor after the store is shut.” The gallery in question is new, and unconventional. It is located at 383 West Broadway, sharing a street address with the former digs of Ivan Karp’s now-defunct O.K. Harris, but the fourth floor space — elegantly lit, with wood floors and a sort of front desk/gift shop festooned with a Bradley Manning banner and various editions and memorabilia — is actually an extension of painter Neil Jenney’s studio. The debut show, up through February, pairs Jenney’s paintings with metal wall sculptures by Lobe, the latter depicting rocks, trees, and other natural features, created through a process of repoussé. That’s “pushing metal over a form or into a form,” Lobe explained, either by hand or using pneumatic tools. The artist does much of his work on-site, physically capturing the landscape on a sprawling property in northern New Jersey that abuts Stokes State Forest. “I see the forest as a text of chaos, with organic and inorganic debris,” Lobe said. “I’m a leftover of the Earthworks people.”Jenney and Lobe have known each other since the ’70s, when they shared the same studio building downtown. Together, they evince a natural bonhomie — it wouldn’t be crazy to assume they are brothers — and share a plucky can-do attitude. West Broadway Gallery is something of a DIY affair, but one that obviously benefits from the availability of Jenney’s 11,000 square foot, floor-through loft —formerly the home of an Italian company that produced artificial fruit, out of paper — which he has owned for decades, since Soho was… a considerably different place. (Case in point: When half of a floor above him was sold, it went for $27 million, to a Goldman Sachs bigwig.) Jenney’s last proper exhibition in New York was with none other than Gagosian, in 2013. But Larry is a busy guy — “to get on the schedule, you have to get in line,” Jenney said — and so the artist figured he could simply launch his own gallery outpost, open two days a week. He and Lobe took out a small advertisement in the New York Times, paid their kids to help staff the space — Jenney’s son also helps fabricate the elaborate frames for his father’s paintings — and got rolling. In early March, coinciding with the Armory Show, they will open a solo exhibition by John Duff, another peer that they have known for decades.West Broadway Gallery occupies only one portion of the floor. The rest of the loft is accessible via a discrete sliding wall, speakeasy-style, and contains a sprawling mini-museum of Jenney’s own output. There are various examples of his signature “bad painting,” a practice he began in the 1970s after an early career in minimalist metal sculpture. (Jenney’s first show was alongside Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra.) And there are a half dozen or so of what the artist has dubbed “Improved Picassos.” These are modestly scaled oil paintings made by a Korean artist who works out of a subway station near the Port Authority. Jenney has commissioned him for years to make altered reproductions of Picasso works, which he then makes his own amendments to — tweaking shadows, adding a bit of lipstick coloring. “I generally have to tune ’em up,” he said. “But I never touch his faces. He’s really good at that.” (Jenney plans to show a selection of the Picassos alongside his own more traditional work in the fall.)In many ways, West Broadway is simply an extension of what Jenney has been doing all along: Using the good fortune of the loft to showcase his own work, without depending on traditional art world mechanics. “I’ve had my space and been able to show 12 months a year,” he explained. “I have a network of collectors and out-of-town dealers who bring their clients by. And I’ve suffered in the market because I didn’t have public activity and transactions — it was kind of secret.” The artist, a spry septuagenarian, mulled over the future in a cozy side room, sitting beneath a quartet of drawings called “Liberty Contemplating the Nuclear Age.” “The simple thing is, I want to show when I want to show. We’re at the end of the trail — it has to happen for us now.”
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