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WELCOME --
Actually, it was a friendly Hi there! that greeted everyone visiting 8 Greene Street in those days; an unusual gesture in New York’s art world then and one still not all that common now. In the last week of September 1989, the Philippe Staib Gallery opened its doors at 8 Greene Street, instantly becoming the southernmost gallery in SoHo — so much so, in fact, that the Gallery Guide needed to lower their area map down to Canal Street to include it. SoHo was still the art center then; Tribeca was just beginning to get its official landmark status; Canal street — gateway to Chinatown — was dirtier and rougher, the hardware and plastics center of the city. Pearl Paint was thriving, bustling its wares to students and artists from all over the world. The name Chelsea mostly brought to mind the Village People; Lady Ga Ga was just five years old, Jeff Koons was about a year shy of stripping down and baring his soul and nethers with Cicciolina at Castelli, and the sale of van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet was about to set a world record at the astounding, precedent-setting price of $82.5 million dollars at auction. My, but things have changed. From its inception, the gallery’s mission was pretty ambitious, if more than a little insane: it would show only sculpture — and at first cast sculpture at that — bronze, the preferred medium. An unusual start, it was at base a terrific idea, making sense since Philippe Staib, with his Fondérie Ocean Societée Anonyme, based in Bangkok, was the second largest producer of commercial pewter in the world at the time (later becoming the first) and had a first-rate bronze casting facility there as well. A good many of our gallery artists were given the opportunity of casting in Bangkok, many of them working in bronze for the first time, all of them creating wonderful pieces. As time went on, a growing number of unrelated artists began lining up to work there as well. Many things changed over the gallery during that first year, adjustments in personnel and direction, but the commitment to the three-dimensional never wavered, the words "Contemporary Sculpture" added to the logo as we went into our second. The Staib Gallery is still remembered fondly by those who encountered, frequented and supported it, but galleries, unlike most of the works of art they show, are pretty ephemeral things. Much of it, particularly when dealing with the exhibition of sculpture, is theatre and, as such, the stuff of memory. And so this website, this exercise in time travel, to not let things completely be forgotten. Art exists best, not in a vacuum (if a show happens in Chelsea and no one knows about it, does it really happen?), but in interactive dialogue — engagement — between artist and viewer, gallery and audience, theatre and gallery. We were given the chance to be creative down there on Greene Street and, like any creative enterprise, we did some terrific shows — and as well a few less so; but we always pushed forward. A little too hard, it may be obvious now, but always forward; and every now and then, I like to think, we touched the sky. We, as Truman Capote so often said, aspired... — René Grayre, New York City, 2015 Director, Staib Galleries, 1989-1993 |