Gallery 98 has a special connection to the artist group Collaborative Projects Inc. (COLAB). Old announcement cards, flyers and early multiples by artists connected to the group make up a significant part of our inventory.
Kiki Smith was an early COLAB member, a leading participant in many of the group’s most memorable activities in the 1980s, including the Times Square Show, the A More Stores, and exhibitions at the COLAB affiliated art space ABC No Rio.
One of the most successful parts of the Times Square Show was the artist- run gift shop featuring low priced multiples. COLAB repeated this format downtown in Soho just a few months later for Christmas. Kiki Smith was one of the principle organizers of this first A More Store on Broome Street. She also contributed a number of multiples including satirical cigarette packs made out of painted blocks of wood. During the first half of the 1980s the A More Stores became a holiday tradition; many of the artist-made items sold there are available at Gallery 98.
The color Xerox flyer by Smith below advertises a 1983 party at Tin Pan Alley, a basement bar on 49th Street that became an artists’ hangout when COLAB organized the Times Square Show in a nearby building. The bar encouraged the influx of artists by hosting exhibitions and hiring some as staff. Kiki Smith was the Tin Pan Alley cook and Nan Goldin was a bartender. Gallery 98 has previously spotlighted Tin Pan Alley’s unusual art story with an online exhibition of finger-paint portraits created there by COLAB artist Cara Perlman.
Tin Pan Alley, Kiki Smith, “Untitled” (Bees), Xerox Color Flyer, 1983. Size: 8.5 x 11 inches.
