Damon Brandt Gallery
In the early winter months of 1982, I found a classic downtown loft on a second floor walk up nestled on Bond Street between Lafayette and the Bowery, a neighborhood still raw with promise and grit. With the help of an inexpensive contractor who wore an eagle feather in his hair and professed to dubious shamanic powers, we built a live/work environment with swinging walls, an elevated metal cubicle of a shower, and a stained door propped up on two saw horses that worked well as our communal desk and lunch table. Damon Brandt Gallery was incorporated as a gallery specializing in Works on Paper and Marianne Larsen, fresh from employment at Sothebys and armed with an appropriated IBM Selectric, was hired. We painted the brick walls white and the original tin ceiling an emerald green, a mistake that was laboriously rectified with Benjamin Moore Decorators White just before the festive opening of family, friends and whomever else was willing to climb the stairs.
An inaugural exhibition of oversized charcoal and gouache drawings titled “The SpinHead Series” was installed by Serge Spitzer, a megalomaniacal Romanian/Israeli artist, who concurrently was having an exhibition curated by Barbara London, in the projects room at MoMA. A favorable New York Times review quickly followed and we were off and running. Three years and some 24 exhibitions later, Bob Monk and Susan Laurence who had just opened Laurence Monk Gallery at 568-578 Broadway, convinced me to join the growing cluster of veteran and youthful startups in the building including; John Gibson, Althea Viafora, Joe Fawbush, Baskerville Watson, Ilene Kurtz, Curt Marcus, and Koury Wingate amongst others .
We inaugurated the new Soho gallery in 1986 with an exhibition by Ed Rainey, a soy bean farmer from Tennessee, graduate of The Memphis Academy of Art and recent recipient of the Charlene Engelhard Award awarded by a committee steered by David Ross, the Director of The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Titled “ Those Amazing Fly Control Tags”, the exhibition was turbo charged by a provocative profile in Interview Magazine written by Robert Becker, sold very well and again, we were off and running. A smaller space, discretely hidden behind a sliding door held an inventory of PreModern art, inspired by a similar room at Andre Emmerich’s 57th street gallery, part of a personal expertise that had been nurtured and supported by my father, Alan Brandt and an essential funding component of the gallery. Seven years and some sixty contemporary exhibitions later celebrating our International roster of artists, many of whose conceptual practice was rooted a strong affinity towards architectural intervention, Damon Brandt Gallery had successfully become a well regarded member of the vibrant New York City gallery art scene.
In September 1991, I had just gotten married and was blissfully anesthetized by the euphoria of my cosmic good fortune. However, some three weeks of honeymoon later and back at my desk overlooking Broadway and Prince, I found myself dealing with an alternative stark reality of the untenable financial pressure of operating an underfunded gallery in an increasingly challenging economic time. With the inevitable dwindling client base, coupled with the undeniable dissipation of the psychological stamina to soldier signaled, the beginning of the end was in sight. A number of well-heeled collectors, including the ever dapper angel Arthur Goldberg and his wife Carol came forward with backing, but I had already lost my resolve and it felt irresponsible to accept any offer of the kind. A coup-de-grace of taxes owed due to the previous year’s successes compelled me to close the gallery on Broadway within the next couple of months. Some artists hung in, others fled without a word of support. The emotional fall out was predictable and a move to a temporary space nearby, designed by the sublimely talented collector , client and interior designer Andrew Ong, was ill advised. The bleeding continued; final staff members were let go, supporters sent condolences, enemies gloated or could have cared less and finally, fueled by the dry heaves of remorse and regret, I walked away from it all.
Time heals most wounds and heartbreak and 30 years later, it feels worthwhile to enshrine the ecstasy and the agony of working with a wide range of artists, from the disarmingly generous to the aggressively self-serving. And to briefly acknowledge and visually review what it all taught me about myself, the ego of my ambition and the curatorial imperative of my program and vision. Below, is a 2-dimensional Rubik’s cube of the gallery’s activity; a non - hierarchical grid of scanned installation shots, hand-labeled slides, and printed invitations which will hopefully simply serve as an incomplete but nonetheless valid testament to my tenacity as a dealer, the shape-shifting indispensable staff that worked long hours by my side and the extraordinarily roster of talented artists that joined together to serve the common purpose of exploring self-identity while seeking to foster an expansive public relevance that even today, feels like an accomplishment worthy of celebration.
