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"Support businesses and organizations that support Chelsea Now" Art
Thomas Jackel Independent curator David Gibson, and artists (from left) Marcy Brafman, Mary Murphy and Amy Chaiklin Big man on canvas TRUE TO FORM BY JEFFREY CYPHERS WRIGHT A true denizen of the art world, David Gibson was groomed to be a “wheeler dealer” from childhood. “All my friends were artists,” he says. Son of the influential gallerist John Gibson, David knew everything about the business from early on. Before he curated his first show in 2000 at L. Brandon Krall’s Nolita salon/studio space, he had written about art, worked briefly for Art in America and helped run his father’s gallery. Affable and generous, Gibson is also a keen judge of art and he has a bear trap memory. “I remember the first article I wrote. It was for Cover. It was about a cartoon novel called “The Cowboy Wally Show,” he recalls. (I remember this fondly as well — Cover Magazine was my baby.) He’s also written for Flash Art, Zingmagazine, NY Arts, Performing Arts Journal, C, and most recently d’Art out of Toronto. I ask who was in the first show and he starts rattling off names. “Amy Chaiklin, Orly Cogan, Jen DeNike, Carla Gannis, Elissa Levy, Norma Markley, Janet Pihlblad, Raven Schlossberg, Carol Warner, Charmaine Wheatley, Jessie Wolk. It was November 17, 2000. The show was called ‘Sugar and Spice’ and it was all female artists.” In many ways, that first show was a blueprint for what was to come. “I wanted it to be pre-political. Pre-feminist. I wanted to bring us back to some innocent time before we knew who we are. I was looking for ideas rather than telling people the way it is. It was about sexual aggression and subversive cuteness.” And since then, how many shows? “In the range of 88,” David quips with a broad smile. “About 250 to 275 artists. I’m in touch with most of them. Maybe thirty or forty disappeared.” As for his taste or vision it is broad too. “I don’t have a particular, specific aesthetic. I’ve always tried not to focus on one style. I think in the long run people who do have suffered.” His trait of showing females has persisted, though some men, like Conrad Vogel, break through his petticoat injunction. David explains that he “meets more women through men than men through men. Women share ideas easier.” So he knows more women overall. Watching the man in action is a treat. While talking to a dealer, he mentions three artists in quick succession who would be good in a group show. Stand beside him at an opening, and it’s like a reception line. In three minutes, three twenty-something artists come over to pay their respects. “He’s like a magnet,” says artist Amy Chaiklin, who Gibson met hanging out at the New Museum bookstore (and who has been in several of David’s shows). “A hundred people say hello. And he goes to all the openings and does tons of studio visits.” Another reason Gibson knows so many people is because for the last two years he’s been summer faculty at the School of Visual Arts. It’s his job to visit all the residence students and critique their work. One of the hazards of being an independent curator is securing a space. For five years now Gibson has curated monthly exhibitions at Realform Project Space in Williamsburg in an 18-square-foot window display. “It’s a place for small work. It’s a chance for an artist who doesn’t have large stuff for a gallery. It’s a chance to treat the art experience like a project and make an installation. I think of it as a jewel box. Williamsburg has always been about intimate art.” Gibson makes the art experience more intimate in other ways too. He’s on the board at NurtureArt, Inc., a nonprofit gallery in Williamsburg dedicated to helping emerging artists. His “Art Stomp,” a weekly e-list of openings, readings and cultural events around town is possibly the definitive guide for art tarts and titans alike. It sometimes lists times and addresses of up to thirty openings in Chelsea in one evening. The current show Gibson has put together is called “True to Form” and features the work of three painters: Marcy Brafman, Jenny Carpenter, and Mary Murphy. “Each of these artists represents a different period in my growth as a curator,” he states, “The first I met in 2001, the second in 2004, and the last was just in my class at SVA over the summer of 2007. Each of them speaks differently about the rigors of approaching form, which is both the image itself and its relative demeanor.” Speaking of demeanor, I’ll say this—all these images are bold. And so is David Gibson.
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