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‘Now Playing’ A spinning gnome, beaded deer and huge stuffed animal were among the attractions at D’Amelio Terras in Chelsea last July during ‘Now Playing,’ a three part exhibition by gallerists John Connelly and Daniel Reich and artist Scott Hug. The three, with their hip outsider aesthetic, transformed the gallery into mini-versions of their own art spaces, making for one of the most talked about shows of the summer.

MK: Why does it make sense for you to show together?

JC: We are attracted to a similar aesthetic and our artists often overlap. For instance, Daniel has shown Assume Vivid Astro Focus in a number of his exhibitions and I have included three of Daniel's artists, Christian Holstad, Nick Mauss and Paul P. in my current exhibition "Today's Man". Scott has also been instrumental in introducing me to a number of young artists and musicians including Hannah Liden, PFFR, Adrian Garcia Gomez, Phiiliip, Grant Worth, Michael Magnan and Avenue D.

DR: We all started out with very little as far as investment goes, adding an extra sense of ‘just going ahead’ which proved a good environment for art that was, in some sense, off beat or enigmatic. In some sense, the show comes out of the alternative/satellite art fair and small gallery scene where the young galleries and fairs get the attention they need to survive by competing through wits alone.

SH: John invited me as part of his gallery and also Chris D’Amelio saw our K48 installation at the Stray Art Fair in Chicago. K48 is a collaboration between many different disciplines, artists, writers, musicians...It’s about the bigger picture. There seems to be a growing trend of artists working together. Instead of working alone in my studio, I work with other artists. [For ‘Now Playing’] I extended my invitation to artists, musicians, poets, slackers and punk rockers to make a mixed CD or cassette tape, DVD, digital images, animations as an artist multiple with a price tag from $5 - $100.

MK: What kind of art attracts you?

DR: I like it when I sense urgency...that the artist draws from a deep well where content is augmented by formal choices. I’m a romantic that way. For instance, I would describe Christian Holstad’s aesthetic as trash bag punk sentimentality (to scratch the surface), because it’s at the nexus of so much and yields so much as a result.

JC: Right now I am most excited about a new wave of painting that is grappling with a contemporary inability to see landscape as pure landscape or abstraction as pure abstraction. Alex Kwartler, Gerard Maynard, Kim Fisher and Philippe Perrot are some of the young painters exploring this territory. Artists who are part of an emerging post-gay dialogue also seem to be something I am interested in showing such as Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Bruce La Bruce, Slava Mogutin, and AsianPunkBoy.

SH: I love Pop... I grew up in the 80's when ‘Dynasty’, video games, technology and politics were all changing the times. Now, it's a different kind of Pop... a personal expressive Pop filtered through different individual psyches.

MK: You’ve all worked with artists who collaborate. Is this a growing trend?

SH: The artist’s ego seems less important today. Combined effort rocks! JC: It's not a trend, it's a sign of the times. I would hypothesize that it’s another outgrowth of the economic situation, where artist are pooling their resources and looking for a sense of community and stability. In a way, it is also a reaction to the corporate state of the art scene prior to 9/11. General Idea is a great example of a collective that thrived for twenty-five years until the premature death of two members from AIDS. They produced work in so many mediums, even publishing a magazine, which really connects them to the younger generation doing similar things right now.

MK: You all seem to share a handmade aesthetic and visual overload is common…

SH: K48 has no budget, which explains the handmade craftiness of the "piece". I used to think that an artist needed lots of money to make big, slick art. I’ve always loved collage and our ‘Now Playing’ show is like one big collage.

DR: We all have had to meet the challenge of displaying artwork in smaller spaces which can involve wall to wall installations or hanging art work ‘too high’ or ‘too low.’ Once I did a Bathroom Group Show and Assume Vivid Astro Focus did a plastic shower curtain artwork because Virgil Marti had already taken up the walls with wallpaper. So its a very organic thing in which practical economic limitations and the care involved in making things by hand endows the work with a sort of love. And the romanticism of that is essential to me.

MK: Why are your shows attracting so much attention right now?

DR: Before 9/11, everything was so career oriented. Artists would come over and say, “Daniel your apartment is too small for a gallery.” And in galleries, there was always this mysterious sense of an appropriate way to display, sell and handle artwork, talk to clients and museums. As a young person starting out, you frequently had the feeling of a censorious environment. But after 9/11, the empty white Chelsea gallery looked like a mausoleum and everything in life seemed like, ‘why not?’