FR:20, Part I, The Environment in Contemporary Photography

September 4 - October 13

 Reception: Wed September 4, 6-4pm

Sasha Bezzubov, Phillip Buehler, Jade Doskow, Sean Hemmerle, Stephen Mallon, Júlia Pontés, Ken Ragsdale, Paul Raphaelson, Ashok Sinha, Zoe Wetherall, Edie Winograde.

FR:20, Part I, The Environment in Contemporary Photography”celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the opening of Front Room Gallery in NYC. The first show of this two-part exhibition focuses on the environment and features the photographers: Sasha Bezzubov, Phillip Buehler, Jade Doskow, Sean Hemmerle, Stephen Mallon, Júlia Pontés, Ken Ragsdale, Paul Raphaelson, Ashok Sinha, Zoe Wetherall, and Edie Winograde. The diverse group of photographs from Front Room’s stable of photographers featured in this exhibition look at man’s affects on the earth in its many facets. They are not all doomsday and gloom but some acknowledge that we, as a species, might be making irrevocable changes to the environment.

We chose the environment as the topic of our anniversary exhibition as it has often been a running theme through the programming in the gallery. Aside from particular group shows, like the recent “Pattern in Landscape” exhibition curated by Kathleen Vance, many of our artists work along themes that directly or indirectly address environmental issues over the past two decades.

Statement from the Founder:

I founded Front Room Gallery in the Fall of 1999 in a factory space on Roebling and Metropolitan in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with “sweat equity” and help from many artists and friends. The name Front Room was meant to evoke a changing weather front, the “avant guarde” or front guard, also the many storefronts in the neighborhood that were “fronts” for something else (it was a different time, and a different Brooklyn). And I lived in the loft behind it so it was literally the “front room”. At that point there were supposedly 20,000 artists living in Williamsburg and about 15 to 20 galleries there.

In the last 20 years Front Room has had over 164 exhibitions, not counting artfairs, offsite curations and online shows. We were happy to relocate to the Lower East side in 2017 and have had 26 exhibitions in our new space in the past two and a half years, and we are looking forward to some great upcoming solo exhibitions in the future. -Daniel Aycock