NO MORE HIERARCHY IN THE ART WORLD.
NO MORE BLUE CHIP.
NO MORE STATUS SALES.
ARTWORK FOR ARTWORK’S SAKE.
Pushup Gallery is an artist-run space in Ridgewood, New York. Born out of necessity to show work by emerging artists, its roots can be traced back to a series of apartment shows put on by a nomadic collective called Verdant. Artists Libby Richey and Elizabeth Sundahl started hosting shows rotating between friends’ apartments, when they met Jacob Hartman and M Shimek and began curating as a team. “Verdant started I think like 5 years ago. Elizabeth and I went to college together and then ended up in New York for different reasons. When we reconnected I said, ‘I’m finding it really hard to find any community here… and Elizabeth said, ‘We should just do a show in my apartment,’” says Libby. “The four of us have been in shows that have been like in basements, on roofs, in music venues… I think the four of us have been in more ‘one night only’ shows than anyone” (L). After several years of pop-up group and solo shows in alternative spaces, the team of now 4 artists with full time jobs pooled personal funds and time to make the transition into a permanent space, now known as Pushup Gallery. “A lot of this was born out of the idea that we were either gonna do this ourselves or keep waiting..and I don’t think any of us were gonna keep waiting,” says Libby.
While the movement of pop up shows is necessary for artists, it doesn’t come without its limitations. M says, “Part of being an artist run gallery is seeing your work in those one night shows… it’s beautiful it’s magical, you’re happy to be shown, but not always do you feel like your work was totally respected at the end, there’s not a ton of time to correct it.” However, their move to a long-term space changes the experience for the artist as well as the people installing the work. “And [the permanent gallery] allows for really complicated work in the space, like work where if you had to show up that morning and get it on your way home, it would be completely impossible. One of the works in my last show needed a full 10 foot U-HAUL to be moved, it was incredibly difficult to instal and weighed a couple hundred pounds. If you’re doing it that day maybe you could do it but it would probably be a piece you would pass on if you had such a small amount of time to make it happen, because it’s overly complicated for how long you have to engage with the work” (M).
The luxury of time that accompanies the permanent space was immediately utilized in a group show titled, UNDERFOOT. Chosen works were examining the entropy blurring the lines between our inhabited systems, both natural and created. An excerpt from the show statement reads, “Moving beyond representations of landscapes as passive or decorative, the works position the city as a conglomerate of resilient, adaptive systems that bur the boundary between nature and the built environment.”One of the benefits of a gallery run by curators who are also artists is an experimental curiosity which is often lost in blue chip spaces. Elizabeth, the curator of UNDERFOOT, says, “I thought it would be cool to put a live patch of grass in the front window and see how that kind of changed throughout the couples weeks it was up.” Curating in a gallery as opposed to a public space allows for long term, site-specific installations like ones seen in this show.
As the team curates work for the space, they specifically prioritize emerging artists who are creating in the studio in addition to working a day job like themselves. Jacob says spaces like this are born out of necessity. “If we were getting shown in non artist-run spaces there would be no need for artist-run spaces.” M adds, “It’s hard to get into non artist-run spaces. A lot of these places in New York, in LA have a huge barrier for entry and we’re doing it the best we can. We feel that we have a lot of flexibility but also there’s a huge financial barrier. There’s the freedom of it, the craftiness of it, but also… it’s hard to say what it would feel like to curate with all the resources. This is all that we know and are fighting tooth and nail for it.” The cost of accessible spaces to show and experiment in is a huge personal investment from the whole team. Jacob says, “The biggest hurdle for all these DIY spaces and artist-run spaces is that none of us make enough money and the world is getting more and more expensive, wringing the money out of the pockets of anyone that’s not the top .1% of Americans. There’s some risk involved. It’s more expensive to do this than to do a one day pop up in your house. But that’s part of making it work, taking it professionally and taking it seriously.”
Projects like Pushup exist for and because of the community they serve. “We need the community bad. We pull from our community every time we do an instal, we have a great group of people who care about what we do. If we forgot about the community there would be no Pushup,” says M. In addition to operating as a running gallery, Pushup hosts critique nights, and secondary events to solo shows like performance work and poetry events. Previous shows can be found on their website here, and upcoming shows and events are posted on their instagram, pushup.gallery.