Dell’s Money Manager Boosts Orphaned Artists With Summer Show

By Lindsay Pollock

Sign (Going out of Business) by Conrad Bakker.

June 30 (Bloomberg) — Contemporary-art collector Glenn Fuhrman is doing his bit to help struggling artists during this time of gallery closings and sagging art sales.

The co-managing partner of MSD Capital LP, money manager for Michael Dell, Fuhrman has turned over his sleek New York exhibition space to a show starring artists whose galleries have shrunk or closed.

“This couldn’t be more timely,” said art dealer Edward Winkleman, standing in a throng of collectors, dealers and artists who attended the show’s opening party. He admitted the theme made him squeamish. “It’s my fear that if you do this show in six months, it will be four times as big.”

Titled “Re-Accession: For Sale by Owner,” — a combination of “recession” and “de-accession” — the summer- long show opened June 23 at Fuhrman’s Flag Art Foundation, located on the 9th and 10th floors of a glassy commercial condominium building called the Chelsea Arts Tower, featuring million-dollar views of the Hudson River and Manhattan’s industrial West Side.

The show features 31 artists, among them those formerly associated with galleries including Roebling Hall, Merge and Moeller Snow — spaces that are now defunct. Some artists had been dropped or otherwise lost gallery representation as dealers have trimmed rosters. Others had ridden out the art boom without ever landing a dealer.

Buy Me

Everything is for sale and an exhibition checklist includes artists’ e-mail addresses so buyers can contact them directly. Flag, which doesn’t normally sell the art it exhibits, is taking no commission and doesn’t get involved with transactions.

Despite the somber circumstances, opening night was no pity party. Waiters offered white wine and lobster and filet mignon hors d’oeuvres, presented on trays decorated with roses.

The crowd was a blend of blue-jeaned artists and moneyed collectors, including Glenn August, president of Oak Hill Advisors, real-estate heiress Denise LeFrak Calicchio and Whitney Museum trustee Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo.

Several pieces specifically addressed the sputtering economy. Artist Matt Tackett, who holds down a day job installing artworks for an auction house, is showing a 10-foot- tall, red-white-and-blue banner with the text, “We Finance Lottery Tickets.” Conrad Bakker’s painted panel reads, “Liquidation Sale/Going Out of Business/Everything Must Go.”

Ugly Foot

Other pieces aren’t as topical. Jay Davis’s “You Can’t Stop Paddling,” is a layered painting featuring an inelegant ex-girlfriend’s foot and a green swamp. Asking price: $24,000.

Davis, sporting a surfing tan, isn’t suffering. Though he is currently without a New York dealer, he sells paintings directly from his studio and is represented by galleries in Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago.

Sales have slowed, however, and he’s adapting.

“I don’t go out to eat as much. I just try and pay the rent on my studio,” Davis said. “Everyone is feeling it.”

The exhibit was organized by two first-time curators: Philae Knight, who works in marketing at auction house Phillips de Pury & Co., and Fuhrman’s fiancee, Amanda Steck.

“I know the subject can be very touchy, but we wanted to approach it in a way that keeps artists’ work in the conversation, and not hidden away,” said Knight.

Knight and Steck put together the show in three weeks, relying on artists they knew, as well as e-mail solicitations for digital submissions, yielding over 150 entries.

The show provides a boost for artists accustomed to bad news. Bill Durgin, who photographs contorted nudes, said he had last shown at Merge Gallery, which recently closed. A Boston Gallery he exhibited with has also closed up shop.

“It’s not a great time to be looking for a new gallery,” Durgin said.

‘In Over Their Heads’

Brooklyn artist Sebastiaan Bremer had shown with Roebling Hall for eight years. The gallery closed last year. “They were a bit in over their heads. It’s hard to run a business without a serious business plan,” said Bremer, who makes moody images, painting over photographs. One is selling at Flag for $11,000.

“It’s great to make bucket-loads of money, but that wasn’t really real,” Bremer said.

Through Sept. 5 at the Flag Art Foundation, 545 W. 25th St. Information: www.flagartfoundation.org/

To contact the reporter on the story: Lindsay Pollock in New York at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com;