Downtown: Collage Culture in the East Village

McClain Gallery and Pavel Zoubok Fine Art invite you to Downtown: Collage Culture in the East Village, a group exhibition celebrating the hybrid clash of cultures, materials, aesthetics and personalities that flourished in the art world of New York City’s East Village during the 1980s.

In a decade marked by conspicuous consumption, conservative politics, AIDS and a newly booming market for contemporary art, the East Village art scene exploded into a bona-fide phenomenon, a perfect storm of genuine creativity, mainstream media attention and undervalued real estate. Drawing from the social movements of the generation that preceded them, the artists and dealers who brought the scene to life positioned themselves as the brash, young and decidedly edgy alternative to the more firmly established gallery districts of SoHo and 57th Street. The parallel lines of Post-Punk, New Wave and Rap brought forth a flourishing bar and club scene where artists, performers and socialites mixed and mingled into the wee hours of the morning in raw spaces that were often decorated by artists. More affordable rents and the patronage of adventurous collectors looking for the next "big thing" gave an unprecedented platform to young artists, making the neighborhood a darling and feeding ground of the culture industry. The intimately scaled galleries and collectives of the East Village witnessed a decade-long boom that foreshadowed the mania for "emerging" art that would soon follow.