After years of various art-world jobs, including gallery work and, more recently, art advising (there was also a short stint as a lawyer in there somewhere), Joe Sheftel would rather challenge collectors than please them. After a month-long group show that served as a "soft opening," Sheftel is officially inagurating his own eponymous Lower East Side space this weekend, on March 4.
"As an advisor, I understand how clients want to be interacted with," the newly-minted Orchard Street gallery owner told me. But, he says, "trying to please collectors is the wrong way to do it. I think people looking at art are often very intellectual and enjoy being challenged."
Struggle is not a theme that's new to the Lower East Side, in historical or contemporary terms. Gallery owners have to cope with tiny spaces, rotting floors, and rusty pipes. But the challenging nature of the neighborhood also creates a community distinctly different from the more high-profile Chelsea area, Sheftel says, which is what makes it attractive. He is on friendly terms with his neighbors, and he claims there is little competition.
Rather, the Orchard Street gallerists — including Rachel Uffner, Lisa Cooley, Candice Madey (of On Stellar Rays), Joel Mesler, and Carol Cohen (both of untitled) — are in it together, for better or worse. "I think they understand that the better the galleries in the neighborhood are, the more people will come here."
He has a point. I dare you to go to the area and visit just one gallery. In that way, community atmosphere serves a commercial purpose.
In the new show, a solo exhibition of Philadelphia-based artist Alex da Corte's work, Sheftel takes advantage of the intimacy of the new space. Many of the works on display are da Corte's small, square shampoo paintings, which are just as they sound — oozing pastels made of dried hair product that gently wash over the glass they are painted on.
Like many of the dealers on the Lower East Side, Sheftel describes his space in terms of the ways it differs from the typical white cube gallery in Chelsea. "These storefront, smaller-scale spaces dictate a different type of art," he told me over espresso in his second-floor office, where the rugged walls are without whitewash, showing a century of wear and tear. "That's why collectors like it down here."
And just who does the former art advisor expect to be coming through his doors to buy? Lower East Side collectors, according to Sheftel, are a subset of the same collectors that buy in Chelsea — the most curious ones. "The people I see down there are people who are more involved and a little more adventurous. They are the people who are willing to go somewhere to see something worthwhile."