Facade of 18 Wooster Street, folded card marking the opening of Deitch Projects’ second Soho location, 2000. Size: 8.75 x 8.75 Inches — Available
In the course of fourteen years in New York’s Soho arts’ district, Deitch Projects completely reconfigured people’s expectations about art. Its founder Jeffrey Deitch was already a well-known art advisor, curator and critic when in 1996 he decided to open his own gallery, where he remained committed to the populist and irreverent impulses of the 1970s and 80s. Visitors to Deitch Projects could always count on being both challenged and entertained.
A good example of Deitch’s approach to art was his first curatorial venture, Lives: Artist Who Deal With Peoples’ Lives (Including Their Own) As The Subject And/Or The Medium Of Their Work (1975). With an emphasis on real-world experiences, and his belief that living could be an art form in itself, the artists explored ethnic and gender issues, as well as, different ways of meshing art and real life. Working with diverse groups of artists each with their own concerns, Deitch Projects presented performance art, environments, multi-media, as well as traditional painting and sculpture.
Deitch Projects closed in 2010 when Jeffrey Deitch was appointed director of the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. But the history of the gallery lives on in the Deitch Projects Exhibition Archives 1996-2010. All of the text below comes from Deitch Projects press releases.
See more at Gallery 98’s Deitch Projects page.
Valie Export, Images of Contact, Deitch Projects, Card, 1997
Valie Export, Images of Contact, Deitch Projects, Card, 1997
Size: 4.5 x 6 Inches — Available
“Deitch Projects presented the first solo show in America of legendary Austrian performance artist VALIE EXPORT. This survey included her infamous poster “Genitalpanik,” in which the artist sits in an aggressive pose, brandishing a rifle, with a triangle cut out of the front of her jeans.”
Ghada Amer, Encyclopedia of Pleasure, Deitch Projects, November 2001
Ghada Amer, Encyclopedia of Pleasure, card, Deitch Projects, 2001. Size: 8.75 x 5.5 Inches — Available
“Gawami al Lada or Encyclopedia of Pleasure was written by Ali Ibn Nasr Al Katib around the late 11th/early12th century…it was written by a Muslim centuries ago, and is forbidden today…Why has speaking and reading about sexuality become so taboo in today’s Muslim society?”
Alan Suicide (Vega), Collision Drive, Deitch Projects, Card, 2002
Alan Suicide (Vega), Collision Drive, Deitch Projects, Card, 2002. Size: 6 x 8.75 inches — Available
“I still feel the impact of an amazing exhibition that I saw at O.K. Harris, Works of Art, in 1974, the year I moved to New York. It was the toughest and most radical art I had ever seen. Lights, TV sets, coils of wire, and other discarded electrical equipment were dumped in piles on the floor. Some of the power cords were spliced together and plugged in… I had not seen Alan since the mid-’70s, but I had never stopped thinking about the impact of his radical art and the intensity of his music… I was determined to find Alan to see if he was still making art.”
Session The Bowl, an exhibition about skateboard culture, Deitch Projects, December 2002
Session The Bowl, with Martha Copper, Futura, Dash Snow, Shepard Fairey, flyer/poster, Deitch Projects, 2002. Size: 11 x 14 Inches — Available
“The central element was Free Basin, an enormous empty wooden swimming-pool sculpture/skateboard bowl created by Simparch. An exhibition of new painting, drawing, photography, and video by thirty-three artists associated with skateboard culture was presented on the surrounding walls.”
Madonna & Steven Klein, X-STaTIC PRo=CeSS, Deitch Projects, Foldout Double-Sided Poster, 2003
Madonna & Steven Klein, X-STaTIC PRo=CeSS, Deitch Projects, Foldout Double-Sided Poster, 2003. Size: 12 x 33 inches (unfolded) — Available
“Rather than the packaged glamour that one might expect from the collaboration of a pop star and a top fashion photographer, the work was raw and menacing. The spirit was apocalyptic. Madonna and Steven Klein entered into a subconscious realm of primitive fears and desires. The work had a religious passion and a sexual charge. The theatricality increased the intensity of the emotions.”
Yoko Ono, Odyssey of a Cockroach, Deitch Projects, Folded Poster/Flyer, 2003
Yoko Ono, Odyssey of a Cockroach, Deitch Projects, Folded Poster/Flyer, 2003
Size: 11.5 x 15.5 inches — Available
“I have decided to be a cockroach for a day, and see what is happening in this city through its eyes. Since we can easily say that New York City is the cultural center of our society, I have taken various pictures of the city’s corners and presented them from a cockroach’s point of view.”
Swoon, Deitch Projects, Folded Poster, 2005
Swoon, Deitch Projects, Folded Poster, 2000. Size: 11 x 17 Inches — Available
For her first New York solo exhibition, Swoon transformed the gallery “into a ramshackle labyrinthine city of paper and paint… populated by realistically rendered—and evocatively cut-out-—street people. SWOON is a master of using cut paper in her exploration of the experience of the streets.”
Kehinde Wiley, Rumors of War, Deitch Projects, Oversized Card, 2005
Kehinde Wiley, Rumors of War, Deitch Projects, Oversized Card, Photo by Ain Cocke, 2005. Size: 10 x 12 Inches — Available
“Deitch Projects presented Rumors of War, a painting installation by Kehinde Wiley inspired by the history of equestrian portraiture. The installation featured four larger-than-life canvases, each updating a specific Old Master painting with a contemporary sitter, framed in custom-designed ornate, gilded frames. Soaring to heights of over nine feet, the paintings’ exaggeration of scale and high-keyed cinematic color highlighted Wiley’s interest in the aestheticization of power and masculinity.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1981: The Studio of the Street, Deitch Projects, May 2006
Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1981: The Studio of the Street, Curated by Diego Cortez & Glenn O’Brien, card, Deitch Projects, 2006. Size: 8.75 x 6.75 Inches — Available
“Curated by two close friends of the artist, Diego Cortez and Glenn O’Brien, 1981: The Studio of the Street focused on the most important transitional year in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s career. In the year 1981, Basquiat made the transition from working on the street to working in the studio.”
Kembra Pfhaler, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Deitch Projects, Card, 2006
Kembra Pfhaler, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Deitch Projects, Card, 2006. Size: 5.5 x 8.5 inches — Available
“The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black was the brainchild of artist and performer Kembra Pfahler… The group was able to create complex and compelling performances filled with low-tech props and minimalist costumes. The brightly painted girls of Karen Black completed the equation, walking into the performance with confidence in their stiletto boots, high-contrast black-and-white costumes, blackened teeth, and two-foot-tall fright wigs, aware that they were the most visually stunning and alarming creatures present.”
Dash Snow & Dan Colen, Nest, Deitch Projects, Folded Poster, 2007
Dash Snow & Dan Colen, Nest, Deitch Projects, Folded Poster, 2007. Size: 14 x 17 inches. — Available
“Dash Snow and Dan Colen’s Nest consisted of their shredding enormous amounts of paper and then ransacking the interior of their selected space in an exuberant overnight fete… One visitor described the piece as “The New York Dirt Room.” The room was exhibited just as the artists left it, trash and all.”
Keith Haring’s Houston Street and Bowery Mural (1982), Recreated by Deitch Projects with Goldman Properties, May 2008
Keith Haring’s Houston Street and Bowery Mural (1982), Recreated by Deitch Projects with Goldman Properties, flyer/poster, 2008. Size: 17.5 x 11.5 Inches — Available
“(Haring’s) mural was up for only a few months in the summer of 1982 before it was painted out but its image remains imprinted in the memory of many people who were part of the downtown artist community in the early 1980s.”
