“We’re now New York-L.A.,” boasts Adam Lindemann, the voluble collector-turned-art-impresario behind the Venus Over Manhattan gallery, which opened on Madison Avenue in 2012. He’s importing to the West Coast the unorthodox ethos that gave rise to such thematic shows as the dramatically lit “Calder Shadows” and “Fire!” a ceramics show curated by Simon de Pury, but with one key difference: Venus Over Los Angeles will be offering primary-market material.Located downtown, the gallery’s two adjacent warehouses first play host to Dan Colen, whose “Viscera” runs April 18 through June 13. Busted guardrails scavenged from the Montauk highway and a related series of paintings will fill the 15,000-square-foot raw space. With 25-foot ceilings and zero columns, “we’ve got generous room to install any size painting, sculpture, any kind of artwork. It will be really good for the artists, and that’s what motivated me,” Lindemann says. Colen will be followed by Elaine Cameron-Weir and Dan McCarthy, all receiving their first L.A. platform.Lindemann and gallery director Sarah Hantman have struck deals with those artists’ existing representatives with an eye toward developing lasting relationships. Says Lindemann, “I think that the Venus concept is that of a maverick gallery where you can do whatever you want. Coming from my collecting background, I don’t really like to adhere to existing models.”He continues, “opening a primary gallery in L.A. is definitely sticking your neck out,” a reference to the mixed success that past transplants have had. But of the percolating downtown scene — anchored around such recent arrivals as the Ace Hotel, Laura Owens’s 356 mission, and the forthcoming Hauser Wirth & Schimmel behemoth — Lindemann adds, “I think there’s a lot of youthful energy there. It’s an up-and-coming place that’s more about tomorrow than today.”A version of this article appears in the April 2015 issue of Art+Auction.
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