I finally met Elyse Derosia and Eric Veit, the co-owners of Bodega, in October of 2012 when I was in Philadelphia to give a poetry reading across town. I felt fortunate that the reading was taking place during the run of “Floor Routine,” a group show featuring three of my friends—Ethan Cook, John Roebas, and Maria Walker. It was an insightful introduction to the space, as well as the owners’ ideas for the space, as the works and how they were arranged felt as if they were meant for the space and the other way around, which is a rare feat for a gallery to achieve.

In March of 2013, I came back to give another reading—this time at Bodega. Like Michael and everyone else I’ve spoken with who has worked with them, I too have been charmed by Elyse and Eric. They are warm and inviting like small town B & B owners, yet whip-smart and ambitious, which is why I have no doubt they are going to prove to be an invaluable addition to the always-thriving downtown New York art scene. Over the course of their time in Philadelphia, they were regularly exhibiting artists who have come to be some of the hottest names in contemporary art. Some of the folks on this lengthy and varied list of rising stars include Joshua Abelow, Sebastian Black, Lucas Blalock, Elaine Cameron-Weir, Paul Cowan, Alex Da Corte, Sam Falls, Andrea Longacre-White, Ben Schumacher, Travess Smalley, Stewart Uoo, and Artie Vierkant.

The lineup for their first New York show confirms that they plan to stay on the upward curve. They will be officially opening their new space on March 9th (6-9 pm) at 167 Rivington St., Lower Level East, New York, NY 10002 with a group exhibition, featuring Tomer Aluf, Sam Anderson, Tova Carlin, Rochelle Goldberg, Carlos Reyes, and Chloe Seibert. The exhibition will run until April 13th.

Below is a recent e-mail exchange between me (from my somewhat new home of Los Angeles) and Elyse and Eric (from their somewhat new home of New York). 

Keith J. Varadi: How and when did the gallery start, and how has it evolved?
Bodega: The two of us and three other friends from college opened the gallery in Philadelphia in 2010. We had all recently moved to Philly and were really interested in creating a space that would provide artists with the time and space to make and show new work. During our three years in Philly, we worked with artists from all over the country, and we like to think that we expanded and fostered the art scene while we were there. We didn’t start with any preconceptions about what it should or should not be. We just rented a space and began putting together shows. Since then, we’ve grown to now publishing artist books and editions, as well as participating in group shows and guest-curating at other spaces.

KJV: What inspired the move from Philadelphia to New York?
B: Other projects beckoned the other three founders away from Philly, and the two of us felt ready for a change in location as well. We still felt very committed to Bodega, so we decided to move it to New York with us. It doesn’t feel like that big of a change so far, as so many of the artists we’ve worked with and people interested in what we do are located here.

KJV: What sorts of differences do you see between Philadelphia and New York?
B: There are so many differences. In a way, Philadelphia’s strengths are New York’s weaknesses and vice-versa. Philly is a very easy place to live and have a studio. Rents are cheap and the city is small, so transportation is easy. But Philadelphia is very much a small pond, in terms of artists, galleries, and critics. Relative to New York, there is not a lot of money in the city that goes to artists, and as a result, most artists have day jobs and there are very few career artists. For these reasons, the DIY and collective art gallery models flourish.

KJV: What is the new physical space like, and how does it compare to the old one?
B: Our old space in Philly had lots of character that was always interesting to contend with: an old elevator shaft, a lofted stage-like area, a trap door, and really gnarly old wood floors. The new space is considerably smaller, but it’s still the same shape. It’s as if someone just scaled down every dimension.

KJV: The old space was located in a very specific area of Philadelphia (Old City); can you talk about your relationship with that space and that area?
B: If there was a neighborhood considered to be the gallery district in Philadelphia, it would be Old City, but there are interesting contemporary art spaces scattered throughout the city. Although we didn’t aim to be located in Old City, it’s a pretty neighborhood and centrally located, so it ended up working out really well

KJV: What were you looking for when you were seeking out a new space and location, and how much do you anticipate this new space and location will influence future exhibition planning?
B: Location definitely matters. There is a big difference between a commercial street in a busy neighborhood, a third floor walk-up in a residential area, or a loft in an industrial district. But, at the same time, one could make the argument that location doesn’t really matter. I think that a lot of people who are aware of us to date had never been to the Philly location. The Internet enables the visibility of so much that would otherwise be inaccessible and the increasing importance of photography, documentation, and networks for visibility are perhaps the most drastic changes in art over the last decade.

That said, we really value face-to-face interaction and were very pleased to find a spot on the Lower East Side that’s so easy for people to get to.

KJV: What sort of programming are you planning for the new space?
B: We plan on continuing to have exhibitions, performances, readings, and other events. Whatever feels interesting at the moment!

KJV: Do you intend to represent artists and do things like participate in art fairs?
B: We find it very important to support the artists we work with and think it’s possible to do so without using a representation model. We’ve considered fairs, though we haven’t participated in one to date. We can’t talk from experience here, but fairs present a lot of complicated issues for us. We have spent a lot of time promoting art and artists who aren’t necessarily part of commercial markets, and because fairs are so expensive, you can’t really go to one expecting to lose money. Participating in fairs then, seems like the opposite of what we strive to do otherwise. That said, we don’t think it’s impossible to participate in interesting and tactful ways.

KJV: In addition to exhibitions, the gallery has also produced books, prints, and performances; what can people expect moving forward?
B: More of it. All of the above. The performances and other temporal programming we’ve done in the past have been some of our favorites and will definitely continue to play a large role in what we’ll be doing in New York. We’re working on a few new book projects at the moment, including books with Kayla Guthrie and Dena Yago.

KJV: Given the fact that you’re both artists as well as gallerists/curators, how do you balance these two practices, and how do the two affect each other?
B: Running a gallery and curating other artists into shows has definitely broadened our network of artist peers. Doing studio visits and meeting new artists continues to be very inspirational to our personal practices. But, curating shows and maintaining a space takes a lot of time and creative energy, and sometimes takes over the ability to go to the studio.

KJV: What are some of the most impressive shows you’ve seen recently?
B: The Jason Rhoades show at the ICA in Philly was one of the strongest retrospective-style exhibitions we’ve seen. Andrew Gbur and Joe Brainard at Know More Games was also great. We were recently in LA for the art book fair and were able to go to Paramount Ranch, which was cool, complicated, and fun.

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I started by co-curating a show at the incredibly progressive, yet somewhat short-lived gallery, Reference, in Richmond. Props to them for showing so many great artists before they became majorly hot commodities!

Anyways, I curated this show, titled Exit Light, with Michael Kennedy Costa, who at the time was a fellow VCU graduate student. Reference was a gallery that was beginning to gain a reputation as a space that showed a lot of Internet art and new media work, and the guys who ran it were really lovely, and great party hosts.

Michael and I thought it’d be interesting to create a show that served as a loose metaphor for the arc of a party, where the works wrapped around the perimeter of a gallery from the ‘start’ to the ‘finish’ of the ‘party.’ We used no Internet art and really no new media, at least as far as 2010 was concerned. This exhibition included many artists for whom I have endless respect, and many who have since found a great deal of success, including Joshua Abelow, Talia Chetrit, and EJ Hauser.

The show also propelled my ongoing interest in collaboration. In the past three years, Michael and I have begun making work and putting together shows under the name Picture Menu. This is a fairly open, cooperative practice between the two of us, and one project often leads into the other, naturally and organically. Picture Menu has become a gallery, a press, and we’re open to see where it goes from here.

Aside from Picture Menu, I have been working on many other curatorial projects.  I recently hosted a closing reception / performance event at Open Space in Baltimore for a show I curated there, titled Liberti(n)es. I am co-curating two upcoming three-person shows with Rachel LaBine. One is titled Style Points & Substance Pangs and will take place at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Philadelphia; the other is titled Style As Substance and will take place at David Shelton Gallery in Houston. These two shows will both concurrently open on April 5th, and as evidenced by the titles, are designed to be semi-complementary exhibitions.

Something that I think has strongly affected my relationship to making art and curating art is my sort of unorthodox artistic background. I came to art later than a lot of my friends who are artists, including Michael and Rachel. I didn’t start making art until I was in college. I grew up playing team sports and playing in somewhat wild bands. So I was sort of initiated with a sense of camaraderie I haven’t been able to shake. I went to school for painting. Like anyone, I need my alone time. But unlike some painters, I can’t revel in the precious alone time of the studio. Whenever I read interviews with or articles about artists who are able to do that, part of me gets jealous. I just can’t work that way. But I also don’t sleep much, and I can’t help but bounce ideas off people and work with other people.

When working cooperatively, I tend to enjoy some element of trust and comfort; I think it’d be weird and uncomfortable to be assigned to co-curate something, like what happens with monumental survey exhibitions. Much like the relationships I’ve forged with teammates, bandmates, or best friends such as Michael, or with my girlfriend, Rachel, I believe it’s true that your biggest critics are those closest to you. If I work on projects with those closest to me, I believe that we’ll scrutinize each other’s ideas in a fruitful and productive manner, for the sake of the others involved.

I am not simply interested in putting together art shows, or at least the sorts of art shows I think we have come to expect and accept. This goes for me working by myself or with others. I think I am really eventually interested in bringing back a vaudevillian vibe in opposition to the spectacle that has become the art world, without all the superfluous and superficial associations. I suppose I just want exhibitions to have more energy. I want to create environments that are at once inclusive and jarring without claiming to have some sort of political agenda like relational aesthetics. I think I’m more interested in relative aesthetics— or how text relates to image, which relates to sound, to space, and back to text.

By. Keith J. Varadi

keithjvaradi.com

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