Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown, hosted by Alder & Co.
Alder & Co., 222 Main Street, Germantown NY 12526
Friday - Sunday 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Alexander Gray Associates announces the inauguration of its offsite exhibition program in the Hudson Valley village of Germantown, New York.
Emphasizing focused contemplation, the year-round exhibition program will showcase Gallery artists, exhibiting one artwork, in one space, for one month. Each artwork will be amplified in the frame of a pristine white cube, located within a rustic barn, a unique viewing experience removed from the context of a fast-paced, noisy art market. Artworks on view will distill the inherent qualities of the object—economy of scale, historical precedent, the conveyance of meaning through material, poetics of metaphor.
Hosted by Alder & Co., a design store specializing in artisanal home goods, Alexander Gray Associates’ space will consist of a white cube—9-foot square—in an unfinished 19th Century barn. Steeped in local history, the barn was built as horse stables for the Central House Inn, founded in 1876 as a Rockefeller guest house, which would later serve as a brothel, a speakeasy, a stage coach house, and various restaurants.
Adjacent to Alder & Co.’s store, the barn has hosted a range of events, including film screenings, performances, harvest celebrations, community dinners and local meet-the-candidates forums since its opening in 2016. With its floors strewn with hay, aged barn-wood walls and doors, and rafters with hanging lights, the space embraces its history, including a mural-sized vintage circus poster, weathered since the Christy Brothers Circus left town in the 1920s.
The space will open with Harmony Hammond's artwork, Bandaged Grid #5 (2016).
Hammond’s Bandaged Grid series (2015-Present) develops out of the artist’s Near Monochromes, combining an earth-based palette with an expanded vocabulary of found fabrics layered in horizontal rows onto the canvas. The use of found material scraps traces back to Hammond’s work of the 1970s, which was made from the discards of friends and businesses in New York’s garment district. Then as now, Hammond harnesses these materials as a means to disrupt the art historical canon. As she explains, “Found and recycled materials and objects are one way to bring content into the world of abstraction, as they all have histories that accompany them wherever they go.” In Bandaged Grid #5, grommets demarcate the grid, in both readymade strips and ones that Hammond has added to the canvas. For Hammond, the holes reference bodily orifices, putting these paintings into relationship with the experience of living in a body.
About Germantown
Germantown, one of the seven original towns of Columbia County established in 1788, is located in Southwest Columbia County, mid-way between Bard College and Hudson, New York. It is home to 2,000 residents, rooted in agricultural traditions and rich cultural history. Today it draws visitors to its small but vibrant Main Street, with unique shops including Alder & Co’s neighbors, Luddite Antiques, furniture maker Michael Robbins, jeweler Mary McGill, and floral design studio Athabold. Residents and visitors shop for groceries and prepared foods at Otto’s Market; Friends gather for cocktails and dinner at Gaskins, where the bounty of local farms and food producers is celebrated.
Germantown’s views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains have provided artistic inspiration for generations, notably the 19th Century Hudson River School painters, including Frederick Church and Thomas Cole. Today, Germantown and its neighboring communities—Red Hook, Tivoli, Clermont, Livingston, Catskill and Hudson—are home to numerous artists and creatives. Germantown sits in proximity to the Hudson Valley’s art destinations, including Storm King, Dia Center for the Arts, Magazzino, Bard College’s Hessel Museum, Olana, Art Omi, and Jack Shainmann’s The School.
About Alder & Co.
Alder & Co. is a store in the hamlet of Germantown, NY. Celebrating the unique and small batch, it is a testament to procuring pieces that elevate the every day and become more beautiful with age and use. Owned by Carla Helmholz and Rebecca Westby, the store opened in Portland, Oregon in 2010, and relocated to a 1876 farmhouse in the Hudson Valley in 2016, continuing the focus on quality over quantity and timelessness over trend.