I was able to get out during last week’s First Thursday events and made the rounds to some of my favorite spots showing new art. If you haven’t heard of Firsts Thursday, it is a monthly event when many downtown galleries and businesses that showcase art all have open access to visitors. Many of them schedule their art openings for this date, serve food and wine, and are generally buzzing with excited people. There are usually bands at various places on State St. and sometimes they feature interactive exhibits at the corner of State and Anapamu, in front of the Art Museum.

Dan Lydersen's ANNUNCIATION

As of the time of this posting, I’m a few pennies short of my first gazillion, so my interest in this gallery is entirely different. My interest is in how a piece of art or artist gets shown here and what occurs once that happens. The layout of the gallery is broken into two very distinct parts, one raised off the street containing the very posh Arts and Letters Cafe. This gallery shows art and sculpture generally from the the first half of the last century. I find that the works shown here are usually pretty, sometimes interesting, but rarely worth more than a few moments of my time. So I ask myself, why is this or that being shown? Is it because someone at the gallery is passionate about them or are they seen as investments? Probably a bit of both. The problem is that to get shown at this gallery you can’t just make beautiful art, you also have to have been knighted with the term “important”.

And just how one gets this honored status is what makes the juxtaposition of this section of the gallery with the adjacent section so interesting. This much larger section of the gallery has an atmosphere that is modern, fresh, and spacious; a difference that is immediately apparent as you walk in the street-level entrance. This month the opening room of the space featured the show “10 Under 30“.

Yoskay Yamamoto's AKASHI

As you might guess from the title, the show highlights 10 artist under the age of thirty.  These paintings are all quite different from each other in style and technique and each shows great skill and most show great imagination.  Many of the artist have local ties and would definitely fall into the category of “Up-and-comers”. For instance, some of them have recently been featured in hipster magazines such as Juxtapoz and Wired. This is what I found so fascinating about the Sullivan Goss show as a whole, part of what made these artists into Up-and-comers was the very fact that they had been chosen to be in this show in this prestigious gallery. In the seemingly infinite wisdom of the institutional art machine, these 10 artists have moved up one more rung towards “importance”. Does the fact that they are being recognized by the art institution mean that they are any less fresh, energetic, or fun to look at? Absolutely not. It does, however, mean that if you want to get a hold of any of their original art before it’s out of your price range, you better move quickly. Go check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.