New York’s Next Top Artist?
By Jennifer 8. Lee

Lyons Wier Gallery

On weekends through Aug. 16, the Art Bazaar at the Lyons Wier Gallery in Chelsea is offering space to artists on a first-come-first-served basis.
The first artist showed up Friday night, 16 hours before the gallery doors opened. The next one came a few hours later. Soon more followed. Word had spread like a virus in the Brooklyn art scene. For a chance to display their work at a Chelsea gallery, they were willing to wait all night.

In the slow summer months of an art industry already battered by a swooning economy, the Lyons Wier Gallery decided to turn the clubby and exclusive gallery approach on its head, offering first-come-first-served access to its space on weekends from July 4 to Aug. 16.

Usually, the gallery puts on monthlong curated shows, and during summers it exhibits smaller shows that last Monday through Friday. But the new type of event, called Art Bazaar, gives 20 or so artists a space in the gallery, selected in the order they arrived. Those who arrive Saturday morning have the option of staying Sunday, and most do.

On previous weekends, the gallery has had to turn away five or six artists who got there too late. And the artists often stand on the sidewalk, at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 20th Street, urging passers-by to take a look at the works inside.

“I respect hustle,” said Michael Lyons Wier, the owner of the gallery, who has a stable of artists he has worked with for a long time. “It’s a different kind of person that will line up at 3 in the afternoon.”


Jennifer 8. Lee/The New York Times

Inside the gallery.And the hustle will be rewarded. Whoever sells the most art during the summer will be rewarded with a fully curated monthlong showing in 2010 at Lyons Wier. “It gives me an opportunity to think outside my white box,” Mr. Lyons Weir said. In other words, he’s offering a mini version of a reality art show: New York’s Next Top Artist, if you will.

He calls the fee a “20/20″ payment. The artists pay $20 upfront, and a 20 percent commission. As Mr. Lyons Weir noted, the experience is “democratic — no visual filter.” Last weekend, one artist, Jan Huling, sold $10,000 worth of her beaded ornate forms in 10 hours.

Mr. Lyons Weir helps the artists by having the show streamed live at Artbazaar.tv, complete with interviews, and listing the current artists on the site. He also gives them pep talks, explaining the importance of the sell in the art world.

Nils Hasche, 27, a Brooklyn artist who was the first in line on Friday, selected a spot for his three paintings by the front window. He said that but for the Art Bazaar, there was almost no chance that he would get to exhibit in a Chelsea gallery in the near future. “In Chelsea, how do you make initial contact with the gallery?” he said. “There is this insidery thing. It’s a little more egalitarian this way.”

Mr. Hasche’s work included two watercolors and a colorful acrylic painting that included eggs sunny side up. On Saturday, other exhibiting artists included I-Ling Eleen Lin, who does Chinese-themed watercolors; Monet Noreiga, who does stylized figures; and Edie Nadelhaft, who had a set of giant closeups of red mouths.

Mr. Lyons Wier said he was inspired to do the bazaar in part because the fierce bargaining in the art market had almost taken on the tone of a flea market. The economic downturn has prompted galleries to career from dreams of multinational expansion to straining for survival. At its peak Chelsea had more than 300 galleries, but in recent months some two dozen galleries across the city have closed. “The art community is just atrophying,” Mr. Lyons Weir said. This was his attempt to shake things up and add some energy.

“We’re making lemonade,” Mr. Lyons Weir said. “It’s been a really great social experiment.”