Janene Outlaw has always lived up to her name. Born and raised in uptown Manhattan, she attended the Bank Street School and Cornell University before beginning her career as a photo editor at publications including The New York Times, Fortune, The Village Voice, and New York Magazine. On March 18, 2011, she launches Outlaw Art, a pop-up gallery in partnership with Town Real Estate, a Manhattan-based firm that handles the most luxurious properties our fair city has to offer.
Inspired by the legendary “outlaw parties” of the 1980s, where club promoters led a merry band of midnight marauders to unlikely locations, and by the rave scene of the 1990s, which continued in the co-optation of nontraditional spaces to create a once-in-a-lifetime experience of sight and sound and motion, Miss Outlaw has created Outlaw Art. Fusing high-end real estate and progressive photography with a distinctive blend of New York’s collectors, tastemakers, and personalities Outlaw Art subverts the art world model.
“I didn’t want to deal with anyone telling me what to do. I wanted to show what I want to show with no rules. I don’t have a boss,” Miss Outlaw asserts, and I feel a gust of hot wind blow a tumbleweed across the dirt road. “The collaborative part is working with the artists and within the realm of this piece of property. Town Real Estate could be considered rebels; after leaving Corcoran Group they started their own thing selling up to 17 million dollar properties, which is risky in this market, but they are thinking creatively to differentiate themselves. Maybe that’s why they want to deal with me and my artists.
“They have been really turned on by the artists and I am really turned on by the spaces they have to offer. This space does not feel like a gallery, it’s intimate, it has an outdoor space, it’s three floors, Japanese dark wood, and it’s in a prime location in the West Village near the Highline. I am all about people are bringing resources together. That’s very current, with the world being what it is. I feel really strongly about working together rather than competing all the time.”
Outlaw Art is a space where worlds collide, an environment when disparate things finding common ground and an interest. Miss Outlaw observes, “My whole life has been about finding something and someone to relate to. New York is the most magical place. You can go to a house party, and at this house party and there could be a drug dealer, a politician, a graffiti writer, a doctor, an escort, and a prince from some Saudi Arabian royalty, and a kid from the Bronx and two Wall Street business guys in one room, in one party. And in some small minute way, I want to have those things come together. They probably all appreciate some form of art and a couple of them could buy this gorgeous apartment and all the art in it. The common interest is art but everyone enjoys comfort and beauty so it lessens the differences between us.
“I believe in bringing divergent resources together where everyone involved benefits. This is the spirit and direction I envision for marrying the worlds of art and commerce. I want to have a place for artists to work outside the gallery system, to keep costs down, to keep it basic, and fluid and light, and flexible and not burdening it with all the things a bricks and mortar gallery has to deal with. When you have overhead you had to deal with the burden of having to sell. Instead, I can show exactly what I want.”
Outlaw Art launches with an exhibition of work by Swedish photography and filmmaking team Marcus Palmqvist, Frode Fjerdingstad, and Igor Zimmermann who made a film using still images, which were then animated. “It’s a visually stunning movie and I am going to show the still from the movie. They show how the modern world infiltrates the ancient world, which is a comment on what is happening right now, it’s about worlds colliding in good and bad ways,” Miss Outlaw states.
California-born, New York-trained, and new Orleans-inspired artist Patrick Salisbury will be showing his three dimensional photographic works and paintings. Miss Outlaw comments, “His work is totally outside of the box. It’s an objet d’art. He also paints, and there’s something about his paintings that is photographic, that takes it back to the analogue days of gelatin silver prints.”
The final artist in the show is musician Saskia Hahn, a sound engineer from German who plays guitar in Sweet Machine, Peaches’ back-up band. Hahn does manipulated photographs, and works in mixed media with images of luxury and warfare. “She is commenting on resources are plundered for jewelry and objects of art to sit on people’s shelves. It’s a high price to pay for these things,” Miss Outlaw observes.
“The combination the three of them working photographically and pushing it beyond the flat framed gelatin print is the motivation for me. How does one stay interested in photography when everyone is a photographer and anyone can take a decent shot? These artists are taking it to the next level for me.”
Sara Rosen
