Kathy Grayson on Another Planet

“I didn’t know about cool music, I didn’t know how to read graffiti, I didn’t know anything until I got to New York in 2002”. Moving to the city and its art scene was Kathy Grayson’s eureka. She started working for gallerist Jeffrey Deitch and, through the 2000’s, ran with him the groundbreaking contemporary art experiment Deitch Projects. When it closed in 2010, she opened her own gallery, The Hole, where she’s been connecting the dots between art, music, fashion and parties. The pandemic might have put the fun on hold, but Kathy is back with a bang. This spring, she’s opening a new space from outer space in Manhattan.

All photos by Kathy Grayson

NOUVEAU YORK: Tough times. Could you describe your state of mind through last year? What kept you inspired and sane?

KATHY GRAYSON: Not being able to welcome the public in person for the shows was very depressing and highlighted how much I depend upon an audience for my curatorial projects, exhibition design projects, events, everything we do here. We still installed shows, we sold them online and with emails, it sucked.

NY: You’re just about to open a new smaller gallery The Hole in Tribeca on April 1st. What does that tell us about your vision of the post-Covid NYC?

KG: We were planning to open a second gallery in Los Angeles in 2020, that was part of my “ten year plan” I was very attached to, but the pandemic made it impossible. All the art fairs were cancelled, and many of the artists had already made the works for their solo booth, so at first I just looked around Tribeca for a temp space, so I could essentially mount the six solo projects there. But we found the perfect space and we were tempted to do more than temp! The Tribeca neighborhood is booming with galleries and I expect that to continue. Neighborhooding will be more important as international travel and fairs are postponed. Walking around a 6-block area and seeing 100 galleries is a dream! Almost as good as Art Basel [laughs].

“New York was amazing. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to break into things, I was just scratching the surface.”

NY: Let’s go back in time. You grew up in Maryland and studied in DC and then in New Hampshire, where you started your first art gallery when you were 19, called AREA. Was it a reference to the [1980’s arty] nightclub in NYC?

KG: In college at Dartmouth in Hanover, NH while I was a junior – so yeah 19 – my friend and I raised money from disgruntled alumni, and forced the administration to give us a student art gallery. We wanted to provide an alternative to fraternity culture. It still exists there today! It was called AREA because they refused to give us a room and just gave us one wall of the Hopkins Center. One wall!

NY: What was your fantasy of New York City before you came here?

KG: My fantasy of New York was from Vice Magazine. [NY artists] Dash Snow and the IRAK crew made NYC look so cool, I met Dash maybe the first few months I was there, and through him I met everyone.

NY: You did an internship at the Whitney Museum while you were a Junior in college, in 2002. Could you describe your first sensations and feelings, spending time in New York for the first time, but also not being just a visitor, having something to do, being busy like a New Yorker?

KG: I lived in Williamsburg on Kent Avenue in a big white warehouse overlooking Manhattan for $500 a month that summer and took the subway up to the Whitney when it was still on the Upper East Side. I did research on their forthcoming Joan Mitchell retrospective. It was amazing. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to break into things, I was just scratching the surface. The first bar I went to was Sophie’s (a dive bar in East Village) and being like “this is another planet”.

NY: That same year, while working at the 2002 Whitney Biennial, you met the artist Chris Johanson and the psychedelic art and music collective Forcefield. You said they “exploded what we expected from an art experience”…

KG: I saw them in the 2002 Biennial, I didn’t get to meet them. When I graduated in June 2002, I moved to NYC that day and looked up where they showed. Forcefield broke up after the biennial, but Chris Johanson showed at Deitch Projects so I made them hire me [laughs]!

NY: Chris Johanson is from San Francisco and Forcefield were from Providence, Rhode Island. Does it matter? In what ways was that revelation still a New York moment?

KG: In the “Live Through This” book, I tried to explain the network of underground art all over America and how it all became part of New York. Mostly New York was just where it came together to get beamed to a wider audience, but all these different cities have their own energies.

“When people emerge from this, I bet there will be some insane shit happening; I certainly hope so.”

NY: At that time, you used to go out to a club named ‘The Hole’. Would you say that club embodied the energy of NYC of the early 2000’s, “fucked up and lawless” as you put it, dark and nihilist, post 9/11. Is it a cliché or did you feel that kind of energy?

KG: The Hole I think was a lesbian club? Or they had a fun lesbian night there, I don’t remember, but it was where all the different types of people hung out from drug dealers, gay dudes and lesbians, graffiti writers, fashion people and art people, all different groups there together, and that vibe is what I wanted for the gallery. The place was destroyed with graffiti, which yes is happening right now on the streets during the pandemic! But there are very few places in NYC where people go truly wild, and certainly nowhere right now. When people emerge from this I bet there will be some insane shit happening; I certainly hope so.

NY: How did you become an art director for Jeffrey Deitch?

KG: I got hired in August 2002 at Deitch to answer phones at the front desk [laughs]. I was terrible at it. Thankfully, I curated a show at this space in Brooklyn that got a New York Times review, and Jeffrey promoted me.

NY: What you achieved with him was certainly the most important and exciting thing happening in the art world through the 2000’s, putting NYC at the center of the action. Do you still feel the influence of those years on the NY art scene?

KG: Until [it closed in] 2010, we did so many great shows together and we definitely were the most exciting game in town. When Deitch closed, other galleries started to do more immersive installations and show edgier shit. Now there are many galleries that resemble Deitch in some ways. Jeffrey’s overarching goal was art for everyone, broadening the audience for contemporary art, making exciting exhibitions where everyone can have a meaningful experience with art. That grand goal continues today with many practitioners, myself included.

The Hole, second gallery location, opening April 1st in Tribeca

“Good art comes out of creative communities, and goes hand in hand with good music, fun parties, cool fashion, a scene.”

NY: Living through the 2000’s in NYC as you did, you do not have any reason to have nostalgia for the 80’s golden age of the city, do you?

KG: I was born in 1980 in DC, private school and college, everything cool I knew about, I had read in books and magazines. Age 4, 5, 6, 7, I was “a punk” every year for Halloween – if you can picture what a suburban DC child thinks a punk looks like. I didn’t know about cool music, I didn’t know how to read graffiti, I didn’t know anything until I got to NYC in 2002, so I can’t really wrap my head around what it was like bumping into the New York Dolls at Gem Spa or whatever, that feels like ancient history to me, Jeffrey told me he would go to the Mudd Club with Keith Haring I was like “….” I didn't know how to process that really.

NY: What about now?

KG: Now aged 40, I feel nostalgia for lost friends I guess. I miss Dash [Snow] like crazy, I don’t think I will ever get over it. But I stopped doing drugs, and I don’t miss being fucked up on drugs all the time, I don’t romanticize it. I don’t want to go back there. And “the scene” I still feel is ever-changing. I feel optimistic about how people can hang out, what art, what music can be made, what experiences can be created. I don’t feel that it’s lost.

NY: About the 80’s golden era and the club Area, you actually did a show dedicated to that seminal gallery-meets-nightclub at The Hole in 2013. As someone who considers art with “a metric of fresh”, do you think the concept of Area kept its freshness even today?

KG: I think the art world desperately needs to integrate better into the creative scene and not be a rarefied luxury goods shop. Good art comes out of creative communities, and goes hand in hand with good music, fun parties, cool fashion, a scene. Area did that, and it must have been an awesome place to hang out. I don’t know if anything recent has come close!

Coming up at The Hole Bowery : “Nature Morte” (April 8-May 9)

Coming up at The Hole Tribeca: Eric Shaw “Pure Mode” (April 1-May 6)

“Movies and music have really shaped the myth of New York, and shaped what we, as New Yorkers think we are doing here. It is a bit of a collective dream.”

NY: Your gallery The Hole opened in 2010. What did it tell us about NYC in the past decade?

KG: For me, I thought I was opening a gallery to continue the Deitch Projects community, but in reality a new thing developed. There are some sad things, like I think now the art scene is more insulated and less part of a “downtown cultural scene”. Most galleries show and sell art, not a lot of community building. And for me, we had a poetry reading, an ASAP Rocky album release party, a lecture by Pussy Riot, but not in many years. In the last few years I too have become just someone showing and selling art. And that bums me the fuck out!

NY: You once said: “Art is about changing lives and lifting spirits, art is about social concerns, art is outside the conventional lifestyle. Art is about challenging notions. Art is seductive gorgeous.” We could replace art with NYC in that sentence. Do you think we can consider the city as a masterpiece of art?

KG: Movies and music have really shaped the myth of New York, and shaped what we, as New Yorkers think we are doing here. It is a bit of a collective dream. So for me, being isolated for a year has meant my power of dreaming is weakened, I need the other people around me to make the spell work! It is hard to explain. The magic has been dead and has to be recreated, and I’m optimistic it will be soon.

Warren Fu The Strokes Logo Collection

Kathy Picks Five New York Classics

When I first got to NYC, I was listening to The Strokes’ “Is This It” and Interpol’s “Turn on the Bright Lights”. The coolest night was Sway on Sundays when they played The Smiths and Belle and Sebastian. Everyone is cool dressed like the Ramones or the New York Dolls. Providence played Lightning Bolt, Brooklyn played Animal Collective and Gang Gang Dance. The electroclash scene.

The book “Meet Me in the Bathroom” by Lizzy Goodman captures the early 2000’s NY music scene really well, she and Hala Matar turned it into an art show that we hosted here 2019 with UTA Artist Space. That was a real nostalgia fest, I’ll be honest!