In Dialogue
The rise of larger mega galleries and art fairs in NYC marks the end of the intimate, clubby world of established gallerists. Tom Fitzgibbon, artist and co-founder of the art hub Icebox4 in Brooklyn, reflects on this shift: “Back in the day, I could walk into OK Harris and watch Ivan Karp playing poker in a smoke-filled back room or meet Robert Miller’s family at their Manhattan residence. Now it’s big money all the time, except for some smaller galleries like Karma, Steven Harvey, James Fuentes, and others keeping it grounded.”
Tell us about the genesis of Icebox4
icebox4 has been designed to bring that freewheeling energy back to NYC in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We don’t charge commission or hanging fees and we have many open calls for established and under represented artists. icebox4 is dedicated to showing and talking about art. Denise Corley, my partner, has really made this happen with her incredible artwork and knowledge of the art world after working for years with Dick Bellamy and Mark di Suvero.
Plus I was getting tired of hearing about art from so many family and friends and decided to jump into the pool. Artists are not the carefree anarchists portrayed in popular culture, they work, sweat and think art.
Let’s take a closer look at Pull~Push, the group show you curated that closed at the end of June.
We have largish shows to bring people together. The recent group show Pull~Push is no exception. It brought together work by Matt Blackwell, Sue Carlson, Denise Corley, Matthew del Carmen, Gordon Fearey, Tom Fitzgibbon, Tadashi Hashimoto, Kylie Heidenheimer, Dennis Kardon, Bernard Klevickas, Jeffrey Kurland, Jonas Kyle, Laura McCallum, Bill Page, Dorothy Robinson, Mark Rosenthal, Jackie Shatz, Laurel Shute, Louise P. Sloane, and Becky Yazdan . It was based a bit upon Hans Hofmann ideas about color and spatial impact.
You are an artist yourself. Tell us a bit about your own work. And does curating and running an art venue impact your own art, and if so, how?
My mom taught biology in Pacific Grove, California and used to take my sister, Coleen, and I to the tidepools in Monterey Bay. It was a wonderful way to learn about nature’s colors and forms. Since then, I have created light-based and painted artwork for the theater, in neon, lasers, LEDs, clothing, and commercial signs. I have been teaching kids and adults about small computers in various NYC public libraries.
Over 50,000 years ago artists were mixing pigments and using color and line to produce images. I like the idea of using leds, lasers and other technology that emits light permitting non-commercial art works. Similar to pigment evolution, no one had produced an efficient blue light until just 30 years ago, opening the full spectrum of visible light. Keith Sonnier, Dan Flavin, James Turrell, and Tatsu Mijajima are influences, but most of the time, the lights overwhelm the work. I’d like to see light better integrated into traditional artwork.
And finally, one of the great benefits to us is that we can spend time in icebox4 really seeing the artwork over some number of weeks in different lighting conditions and moods. Art teaches us.
Are you open to submissions, and if so, what is a good way to submit?
Keep checking http://icebox4.com for future shows, and make sure you are on our mailing list.
What can you share about the future programming at Icebox4?
The icebox4 September show will be a retrospective for our deceased roommate, Mark B. Russell, a contemporary American Visionary artist (1956-2023). We’re hoping to create interest in his poetic plastic sculpture.
Shibboleth will be our October show. It’s a glorious Hebrew word with many meanings, but primarily, it describes a word exclusive to a particular group, a catchword, or a belief that is no longer correct. It should be a very good show.
