The Hole Contemporary art gallery New York and Los Angeles

East Hampton, NY: Eric Firestone Gallery and The Hole are pleased to announce Storage Wars the first collaboration between the New York galleries.

Storage Wars examines the fundamental reality that much contemporary art resides in a crate or wrapped in plastic. Aside from the relatively brief period of its presentation in a white gallery, the lifespan of the artwork is dominated by languishing in storage between exhibitions. Galleries, and increasingly collectors, have extensive storage spaces packed with artworks. In an effort to reveal the previously unseen or briefly seen artworks in our inventories, Eric Firestone Gallery and The Hole will present a selection of this cache “as is.” The gallery will be stacked with crates opened to reveal their previously secreted away contents.

Visiting Storage Wars will be like getting a private tour of the galleries’ storages. It will include new works just arrived from overseas that will get to breathe for the first time alongside works perhaps forgotten in the galleries’ archive and pulled out for a fresh start, underground artists, chance secondary market works and a few surprises.

Relational aesthetics dictates awareness of the socio-cultural forces that inform one’s experience of art, this show intentionally exposes the art as objects whose lives dictate that they must be wrapped, crated, shipped and stored prior to exhibition then often sent right back into storage. If a gallery is a white box, where for a brief moment artworks are liberated from the confines of wooden crates to be shown for a month or so only to be packed away again, we seek to highlight this moment in the spotlight by literalizing the exchange of goods from within the exhibition space itself. At the same time, the beauty of the artworks will transcend this raw un-filtered presentation; the works appear as objects whose potential beckons, full of excitement to be liberated from their crates and resume their lives on walls beneath the admiring gaze of viewers.

Some artists on view from Eric Firestone Gallery include Sanford Biggers, Eric Freeman, Max Snow and Eric White. The Hole’s list features Kadar Brock, JIM JOE, Evan Robarts, Holton Rower, and many more.

For press inquiries, please contact efg@ericfirestonegallery.com or krysta@theholenyc.com

4 NEWTOWN LANE

EAST HAMPTON, NY 11937

631.604.2386

EFG@ERICFIRESTONEGALLERY.COM