A new art gallery is opening in Vero Beach. Called Project Space 1785, it is a little hard to locate at first, but the four artists pooling resources to present their own and other artists’ work there – Aric Attis, James Ruby Barsalou, Augie Ruiz and Jared M. Thomas – hope that the aesthetic payoff will be worth the search.
Friday’s reception for the inaugural exhibition, “Immediate Delay,” coincides with the downtown gallery stroll. The exhibit will feature photographs, a mixed media installation and a video projection.
PS 1785, as the artists are calling it, is in the Len Mar Shoppes, a small L-shaped plaza at 18th Street and Old Dixie Highway. The plaza is also home to Chive restaurant; PS 1785 is in the adjacent leg of the plaza, behind the featureless door in a windowless wall between Chung’s Taekwondo and Finishmaster.
The space is pretty rough; the artists have moved into it in as-is condition. The interior is divided into four small rooms. In the front room, an aqua-colored floor still bears the adhesive pattern of the vinyl flooring strips from days past. The walls throughout the space are a motley assortment of colors. In one of the rooms raw electrical wires poke out of missing squares of wall board, and a window opening on one of its walls bristles with nail heads.
The space is owned by Neli Santamarina, a Miami-based real estate investor (Gloria and Emilio Estefan are her longtime friends and clients). She granted the artists permission to modify the space in any way they see fit.
“We talked about renovations, and opening it up more, but for this initial show, I would prefer to deal with the existing site,” says Barsalou.
He says to expect sculptural objects on the front or the back of the building – even on top of the building, “to kind of draw attention to the space.”
And because it is blocks away from the 14th Avenue gallery district, the PS 1785 artists hope it will be a stop for adventurous art lovers on future gallery stroll evenings. “I hope that even if they think this is a little off the beaten path, they will come and see what it’s all about,” says Thomas.
Barsalou, curator of “Immediate Delay” as well as one of its exhibitors, explains: “These types of shows I curate are meant to be platforms for experimentation. In the context of a commercial gallery, an artist may not have the creative license to show whatever they please.”
To that, Thomas adds that while artists in the group are not opposed to selling their work, sales are not the primary reason for opening the gallery.
“Particularly this show,” agrees Attas. “Because of the nature of the space, it’s a lab – it’s an opportunity to try something different.”
In his day job, Attas is the owner of Aric Attas Creative, a commercial photography studio. For PS 1785’s first show, he will present a video installation that relates to his series of abstract photos, “Seeking the Light.” Gallery-goers may remember those still photos from Attas’ solo show last summer at Lighthouse Art and Framing.
The video had its origin in a mundane event: a visit to a doctor’s office. Cooling his heels in the waiting room, Attas was mesmerized by a rectangle of sunlight reflected on a wall. Not the type of guy to leave home without his camera, Attas shot the reflection with his camera’s video function. He later edited the capture in his computer, altering the imagery to create “something that I didn’t set out to do,” he says.
The result is not a traditional artwork that hangs on the wall. “It’s more of an ambient piece,” Attas says. “It’s non-narrative, it’s more about creating an experience.”
The unplanned, the accidental, the experiential runs through the aesthetic of the four artists.
Indian River County native Thomas will show a black-and-white photo series called “Illusory Artifacts” that he shot with a Smartphone during an extended stay in New York City last summer.
The images in the series are of people caught in public moments of private reflection. There are people absorbed in the newspapers and periodicals; others are dozing in a subway car or bustling along the street, intent on personal business. The empathy with which they are depicted reveals the artist to be a tender-hearted voyeur. The series also includes as-found still lifes shot in the city’s streets as well as formally composed pictures of building and interiors.
Unlike Attas, Thomas presents his work in the traditional way, framed and glazed, and hanging on the wall.
Ruiz will show a series of photographs, both in black and white and color, shot on 35mm film. Like Thomas, he grew up here; he and Thomas are members of a local band called Prayer Chain. Ruiz, according to Thomas, preferred not to be interviewed for this article because he “wants to let his work speak for itself.”
“His style tends to be more spontaneous than mine,” Thomas says. “Composition is a focus and a priority for me, whereas his is more focused on documenting his experiences as they happen. He always has his camera with him.”
Los Angeles transplant Barsalou, intrigued by the number of free TV sets that he finds offered on Craigslist, is toying with the idea of creating an installation piece out of old TVs.
“I work very improvisationally,” he says. “I’m interested in collecting a mass of plastic material, components, the different variety of what’s on the screen,” he says.
Barsalou anticipates that the TVs will be plugged in and turned on and showing, well, something.
“What will be on those screens, the content, may be static,” he says. If he decides he wants to have more substantial content, he may hook the sets up to a video player, or hook the TV up to a camera that photographs people as they come in to the space.
If PS 1785 sounds like a young artist’s gambit, it is, mostly. The youngest man in the group is 22; the median age of its members is 32.
There is a bit of youthful solipsism in their rhetoric. Thomas says the group’s work is “not really made in order to appeal to anyone. It’s made to appeal to us, and hopefully we can bring people in who share that same taste.”
“Immediate Delay” opens with a reception Friday, Feb. 6 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. At other times the gallery is open by appointment only.