Wish You Were Here
Vacant storefronts are blank canvases for these artists at work.
enRoute: August 2009 Issue
http://enroute.aircanada.com/en/articles/wish-you-were-here-9
Los Angeles
Phantom Galleries L.A.
Peer into an unused furniture store in the City of Angels, and you might be haunted by an installation curated by Phantom Galleries L.A. But don’t blink; it might vanish. Disappearing and reappearing spaces are used to stage installations like Kim Abeles’ commemorative plates depicting well-known faces, including Ronald Reagan’s, “inked” out of city smog.
213-626-2854, phantomgalleriesla.com
Philadelphia
Dumpster Divers
In the 1960s, this boulevard bristled with counterculture; now art lovers are bringing South Street back to its bohemian past. A group called the Dumpster Divers turns trash into treasure with street signs, old licence plates and lampshades bursting across the space one day and mazes sculpted out of recycled Styrofoam the next.
732 South St., dumpsterdivers.org
New York
Exhibition 211
Dice are rolled and names are drawn from a hat to determine the space and order in which artists add to or destroy their predecessor’s work in this vacant Elizabeth Street storefront, which explains how paper airplanes became a carpet of multicoloured confetti. Sloppy seconds have never looked so good.
211 Elizabeth St., exhibition211.blogspot.com
Toronto
minnow & bass
When minnow & bass, a nomadic artist-run space, was housed in a defunct store on the edge of Kensington Market, artist Irene Loughlin stopped foot traffic by dancing in the gallery’s window on piles of dirt wearing a striking green dress. But its founder Faye Mullen really made the Kensington store home when she lived in the space for a week, watching passersby watch her.
