NEW YORK— D’Amelio Terras gallery, the pioneering Chelsea art dealership founded in 1996, has announced that it will soon be closing its doors. The move will see co-owners and founders Christopher D’Amelio and Lucien Terras splitting up their partnership — D’Amelio will open a new gallery in the current 525 West 22nd Street location and Terras will move on to separate ventures, working with artists and institutions.
“It was a very thoughtful and mature decision after 15 years of partnership to have a change and work independently,” D’Amelio told ARTINFO. Despite the recent high-profile closings of New York’s South Asia-focused Bose Pacia gallery and the 160-year-old blue chip Knoedler gallery (following an ongoing law suit over allegedly forged work) in the last two months, the dealer said that it wasn’t poor sales that precipitated the changes. “It was definitely not an economic decision,” he said.
D’Amelio and Terras began discussing the possible split “at the end of 2008 and 2009, when the economy did present a real challenge, whereas things previously had moved quite smoothly and effortlessly forward,” D'Amelio explained. “That became a time of buckling down and surviving, which we did.” The period of austerity did “make us both think about what it is we exactly want to do,” D’Amelio said.
“I expect a lot more from both of us immediately,” the co-owner added. “We’re not checking out, we’re just changing the form.” With his new gallery, D’Amelio will be taking on staff, working with some of the same artists the gallery currently represents and seeking out new additions as well.
D’Amelio Terras currently represents artists including Dario Robleto, Matt Keegan, and Polly Apfelbaum. The space’s current exhibition is Leslie Hewitt’s “Blue Skies, Warm Sunlight,” an exploration of photography and sculpture. The two co-owners both have extensive backgrounds in contemporary art and worked together at Paula Cooper Gallery from 1992 to 1996, after which they founded the joint gallery.