Talking shop with Nick Lawrence of Freight + Volume

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 13 / December 22 - 28, 2006

Chelsea Arts & Lifestyles: Fine Arts

Courtesy Freight + Volume

Andrew and Elizabeth Neel, “Elizabeth Neel Guts a Fish,” January 2004, High Definition video film still

Talking shop with Nick Lawrence of Freight + Volume

By Shane McAdams

An art gallery as a business is unlike any other commercial enterprise. Whereas a more conventional undertaking like, say, a plumbing supply store, exists to sell gaskets and drain covers at enough of a profit to sustain themselves — and possibly pass the business on to their children — art galleries are often labors of love, and many art dealers are so integrally involved in the selection and curation of the art they represent that they are functionally artists themselves.

Given the personal, indeed emotional, nature of the business, many of the galleries around today are the result of a single galleries splitting into multiples, or gallery directors leaving their old galleries to express their own independent aesthetic. It is truly a unique generative model, unrivaled anywhere except for situation comedies and rock bands.

When Freight + Volume opened in 2003, it wasn’t obvious to everyone that its founder Nick Lawrence was one of the “L’s” in LFL Gallery along with the seemingly omnipresent “F” of Zach Feuer. But in the two plus years since being out on his own, Lawrence has generated significant critical and popular attention in his own right.

A testament to this fact is that I usually hear about Lawrence’s shows in conversation before I have a chance to see them at his gallery. Chris Gilmore’s “Pussy Galore” exhibition earlier this year circulated through popular circles so thoroughly that I heard it discussed on a half-dozen occasions before I saw the show in its second week. Like a more reflective, less clinical Tom Demand, Gilmore recreates objects such as typewriters and motor vehicles to scale out of cardboard and glue, evoking the generalized quality of dreams and memory.

This kind of work has helped Freight + Volume gain a reputation for youthful, energetic art with brains. They feature a lot of work concerned with language, artifice, and the nature of communication itself, but without the preachy sobriety you might expect from art of this sort. Andrew and Elizabeth Neel’s extraordinary exhibition, “Event,” was one of the most succinct jabs at the seductive power of narrative I’ve ever seen. More direct in its criticism about the seduction of pop phenomena was “Lustfaust: A Music Anthology 1976-1981,” which may or may not be a legitimate, late ’70s experimental German noise band. In its ambiguity, “Lustfaust“ questioned the nature of information and legitimacy the way Reena Spaulings did at the last Whitney Biennial. The difference? I still don’t know if Lustfaust is real.

And then there’s Brendan Cass — the star of F+V’s current show and the man everyone wants a piece of. Cass’s seemingly naïve landscapes gather emotional impress by the second as you stand in front of them. Seemingly straightforward and loosely painted, his painterly reflections of quaint Alpine villages are what Barnaby Furnas would paint if he had access to Maureen Gallace’s mind.

This past week I had the chance to rack Nick Lawrence’s brain for what he was looking at around the art world.

Jonathan Meese/Tal R’s collaboration “Mother” at Bortolami Dayan
Any of Meese’s collaborations are stellar, especially his work two years ago with Albert Oehlen (which was accompanied by a Koenig limited edition book.) As is Tal R’s current show with my former partner, Zach Feuer. The guy is at once disarmingly innocent and ultra-sophisticated in the same brushstroke — a tough maneuver to pull of well, if at all.

Nicola Tyson at Friedrich Petzel
The woman knows intimately that wonderful, demilitarized zone between abstraction and representation, a terrain as tricky to navigate as Tal R’s high/low.

Dan Nadel’s Picturebox publications, especially “Nog a Dod — Prehistoric Canadian Psychedooolia,” edited by Marc Bell, and Taylor McKimens’ comic book, “the Drips”
Pure, diamond brilliance. Dan’s got publishing vision to be sure.

Anything by Charles Bukowski
Past, present, future. We may do a show of his illustrated books and manuscripts down the line. The guy was a dedicated, insane painter as well an off-the-res druken, poet/bard. Always ahead of his time. Matt Dillon’s “Factotum” was an excellent recent film offering of one of his classics. “Bring Me Your Love” with R. Crumb will always be a cornerstone of the genre.

Chico Buarque’s novel, “Budapest”
Buarque is Brazil’s best import, a singer and a fantastic novelist. In his latest book he reinvents the Hungarian language, and a city he’s never visited — much like Brendan Cass does to the Swiss Alps in paint.

Bill Brady’s ATM gallery
Always a roughcut gem — especially his stars Eric Sall, Huma Bhabha, Min Kim, and Tomoo Gokita.

Freight + Volume’s newest publication, “Freight + Volume”
120 square pages featuring Brendan Cass and Brian Belott will be on the stands in January. It gets in real close to the creative lives of these artists through pictures and interviews. It’s another physical manifestation of my ongoing efforts to combine text and image — what F+V was built on. I received enormous help and input from my super new directors, Yasha Wallin and Steven Stewart.

Michael Scoggins’ latest angst-ridden-yet-comical, oversize journal entries
Scoggins makes my love life look smooth by comparison, and that’s no small feat.

British artist Tom Ellis (another F+V production)
This man just might pick up where Robert Smithson left off. If you missed his large, stunning red text piece “Je Ne Regrette Rien” in front of the Pulse Miami Basel tent this year — based on Sinatra and Piaf and which he completed in five days — see his installation at F+V opening Jan. 12th.

Sake at Decibel’s
This is a potent, late-night hangout. And check out the awesome and relatively cheap omakase sushi at Kanoyama, also in the East Village.

Angus and Venus
Lastly a big shoutout for my magnificent, dastardly hounds, Angus and Venus — male wheaten and girl rotty/lab mix, respectively. Two tireless and hilarious gallery mascots extraordinaire.

Freight + Volume is located at 542 W. 24th St., 212-989-8700, www.volumegallery.com. Email Shane McAdams at Mcadamsshane@hotmail.com.