Minus Space is an art gallery located in

Dumbo, Brooklyn Dumbo (or DUMBO, short for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The area known as Dumbo used to be known as Gairville. It encompasses two sections: one located between the Manhatta ...

, NY. It specializes in

abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th ...

and

reductive art Reductive art is a term to describe an artistic style or an aesthetic, rather than an art movement. Movements and other terms associated with reductive art include Minimal art, ABC art, anti-illusionism, cool art, rejective art, Bauhaus aesthetic, ...

History

Minus Space began as an online

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

ial and critical project presenting reductive and concept based art. Reductive art includes

geometric abstraction Geometric abstraction is a form of abstract art based on the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective (non-representational) compositions. Although the genre was popu ...

, artwork that deals with repetition,

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...

or limited color, seriality.''Neighborhood Beat'': Profile on Minus Space & Michael Brennan, BCAT / Brooklyn Community Access Television, January 25, February 14, February 19, and February 23, 2007, Episode 31 and

minimalism In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

. It is also characterized by the use of plain-spoken materials, precise craftsmanship and intellectual rigor.''Minus Space: The Art of Reduction'', P.S. 1 Newspaper, Fall / Winter 2008, p. 2. It was launched as an online curatorial project in August 2003 by Brooklyn

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

s Matthew Deleget and Rossana Martinez, and gradually developed into a showcase for dozens of artists. They began by putting portfolios and curating exhibitions online. Minus Space published interviews of artists, reviews and critical essays. At this point project was only online, literally ''minus space''. Minus Space then started to produce physical exhibitions in their Brooklyn project space. These included one person shows of

abstract painting Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th ...

, installations and

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

.Minus Space, home page. 17 June 2008. In addition they began to curate exhibitions nationally and internationally at

universities A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

, galleries,

artist-run space An artist-run space or artist-run centre (Canada) is a gallery or other facility operated or directed by artists, frequently circumventing the structures of public art centers, museums, or commercial galleries and allowing for a more experimental ...

s and nonprofit spaces located in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

;

St. Mary's City, Maryland St. Mary's City (also known as Historic St. Mary's City) is a former colonial town that was Maryland's first European settlement and capital. It is now a large, state-run historic area, which includes a reconstruction of the original colonial set ...

;

Sydney, Australia Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and List of cities in Oceania by population, Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metro ...

;

Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

;''Machine Learning'', exhibition catalog, The Boyden Gallery of St. Mary's College of Maryland, The Painting Center, Gallery Sonja Roesch and Minus Space, 2007. inside cover.

Brussels, Belgium Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

. Minus Space opened their initial gallery space at 98 Fourth Street in Gowanus in April 2006.Maine, Stephen. “The Reductive Expands: Minus Space will move from 175 feet in Gowanus to a Dumbo loft”, Artcritical, September 12, 2011. In September 2011, they relocated to a gallery-filled building at 111 Front Street in Dumbo.

Hyperallergic ''Hyperallergic'' is an online arts magazine, based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by the art critic Hrag Vartanian and his husband Veken Gueyikian in October 2009, the site describes itself as a "forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking ...

selected the Minus Space exhibition ''Roberta Allen: Works from the 1970s'' as "Best of 2014: Top 10 Brooklyn Art Shows."

Exhibitions and curatorial projects

In 2008,

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...

exhibited ''Minus Space – The Art of Reduction'', a survey of 54 artists from 14 countries affiliated with Minus Space. The exhibition was curated by

Phong Bui Phong H. Bui (born September 17, 1964, in Huế, Vietnam) is an artist, writer, independent curator, and Co-Founder and Artistic Director of ''The Brooklyn Rail,'' a free monthly arts, culture, and politics journal. Bui was named one of the "100 ...

publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

of the

Brooklyn Rail ''The Brooklyn Rail'' is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The ''Rail'' is based out of Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, criti ...

and P.S. 1 curatorial advisor. The exhibition marked the 5th anniversary of Minus Space. In 2008 Minus Space also curated an exhibit to ''re-present'' abstract

shaped canvas Shaped canvases are paintings that depart from the normal flat, rectangular configuration. Canvases may be shaped by altering their outline, while retaining their flatness. An ancient, traditional example is the '' tondo'', a painting on a round p ...

paintings as new, made by Mark Dagley first shown with

Tony Shafrazi Tony Shafrazi (born May 8, 1943), is an American art dealer, gallery owner, and artist. He is the owner of the ''Shafrazi Art Gallery'' in New York City who deals artwork by artists such as Francis Bacon, Keith Haring, and David LaChapelle. Early ...

Gallery 20 years earlier in 1987. Most of the exhibition of was painted in

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

Bunker in the

Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenneth L. "B ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. They curated a traveling exhibition ''

Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

'' which was shown at the Boyden Gallery of

St. Mary's College of Maryland St. Mary's College of Maryland (SMCM) is a public liberal arts college in St. Mary's City, Maryland.Maryland State Archives, Online Manual, "St. Mary's College Of Maryland: Origin & Functions" http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/25univ/stmarys ...

, The Painting Center in New York City, Gallery Sonja Roesch in Houston, TX in 2007 and 2008. The title of the exhibition was inspired by a subfield of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

concerned with the design and development of

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing c ...

that allow computers to ''learn''. Machine learning algorithms recognize patterns within massive sets of data. Real world applications include the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

. This exhibition examined new pattern painting in the information age. Minus Space organized the group exhibition, Escape from New York, which originated at Sydney Non Objective,

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, in 2007, later traveled to

Curtin University Curtin University, formerly known as Curtin University of Technology and Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT), is an Australian public research university based in Bentley, Perth, Western Australia. It is named after John Curtin, ...

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

in 2008, Project Space Spare Room,

RMIT University RMIT University, officially the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,, section 4(b) is a public research university in Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city ...

in Melbourne in 2009, and then to The Engine Room,

Massey University Massey University ( mi, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa) is a university based in Palmerston North, New Zealand, with significant campuses in Albany and Wellington. Massey University has approximately 30,883 students, 13,796 of whom are extramural or ...

Wellington, New Zealand Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

in 2010. In 2009, Minus Space exhibited

album covers An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, ...

along with ephemera and documentation from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation demonstrating the record jackets as firsthand projects in abstract

applied art The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univers ...

. In 2011, Minus Space exhibited a collection of vintage issues of

Life (magazine) ''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...

representing the magazine's historical coverage of modern art, including the 1949 article, “

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?,” alongside works by the artist Loren Munk addressing both the history of

New York School (art) The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. They often drew inspiration from surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in partic ...

and the field of

art criticism Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is quest ...

. In 2013, Minus Space organized, in collaboration with artist John Zinsser, a large survey exhibition examining the history and legacy of gallerist Julian Pretto (1945-1995) and his downtown New York galleries, active during the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. The exhibition featured the work of more than 40 national and international artists in an array of different media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and poetry.

Artists

Represented artists and estates:Minus Space. 1 April 2015. * Roberta Allen * Hartmut Böhm * Sharon Brant * Michael Brennan * Bibi Calderaro * Vincent Como * Mark Dagley * Julian Dashper *

Gabriele Evertz Gabriele Evertz (born 1945 in Berlin) is an American painter, curator and professor who is applying the history and theory of color in her work. She is known for abstract color painting and Geometric abstraction. Life and work Gabriele Evertz ...

* Linda Francis * Cris Gianakos * Daniel Göttin * Julio Grinblatt * Lynne Harlow * Gilbert Hsiao * Ward Jackson * Kyle Jenkins * Russell Maltz * John Nixon * Carrie Pollack * Leslie Roberts * Michael Rouillard * Erik Saxon * Robert Swain * Tilman * Li Trincere * Jan van der Ploeg * Sanford Wurmfeld Minus Space has also exhibited work by

, Rene Pierre Allain,Pobric, Pac. “Julian Pretto Gallery”, The Brooklyn Rail, October 3, 2013. Taka Amano,

Carl Andre Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures and for the suspected murder of contemporary and wife, Ana Mendieta. His sculptures range from large public art ...

Stephen Antonakos Stephen Antonakos ( el, Στυλιανός Αντωνάκος; November 1, 1926 in Agios Nikolaos, Laconia, Greece – August 17, 2013 in New York City) was a Greek born American sculptor most well known for his abstract sculptures often incorporat ...

Robert Barry (artist) Robert Barry (born March 9, 1936 in the Bronx, New York) is an American artist. Since 1967, Barry has produced non-material works of art, installations, and performance art using a variety of otherwise invisible media. In 1968, Robert Barry is q ...

, Tom Brazelton, Farrell Brickhouse, Rosemarie Castoro, Peter Downsbrough, Kathy Drasher, Anoka Faruqee,Micchelli, Thomas. "Confounding the Eye: 'Breaking Pattern' at Minus Space", Hyperallergic, March 28, 2015. Gail Fitzgerald, Suzan Frecon,

Michelle Grabner Michelle Grabner (born 1962 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin) is an artist, curator, and critic based in Wisconsin. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She has curated sever ...

, Christian Haub, Nancy Haynes, Marcia Hafif, Betsy Kaufman, Melissa Kretschmer, Gary Lang,

Ellen Lanyon Ellen Lanyon (December 21, 1926 – October 7, 2013) was a painter and printmaker from Chicago, Illinois. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), her MFA from the University of Iowa School of Art and Art His ...

, Christopher Lea, Julian Lethbridge, Daniel Levine,

Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

, Tom Martinelli, Douglas Melini, Gregory Montreuil,

Olivier Mosset Olivier Mosset (born 1944 in Bern, Switzerland) is a Swiss visual artist.

, Victoria Munro, Mary Obering, Antonella Piemontese, Donald Powley,

Lucio Pozzi Lucio Pozzi (born 1935 in Milan) is an Italian-born, American artist currently based in Hudson, New York, and Valeggio sul Mincio, Verona, Italy. He studied architecture in Rome before moving to New York City in 1962. Pozzi is a painter whose p ...

, Daniel Reynolds, Stephen Rosenthal, Michael Scott, DM Simons, Phil Sims, Cary Smith,

Ted Stamm Ted Stamm (1944-1984) was an American minimalist and conceptualist artist. Biography Ted Stamm grew up in Freeport, New York. He graduated from Hofstra University with a Bachelors of Fine Art, and moved to Soho in downtown Manhattan. His studio ...

, Steven Steinman, Ted Victoria, Merrill Wagner, Oliver Wasow, Stephen Westfall. Robert Yasuda, and John Zinsser

Presence online

Minus Space has a space on the internet enabling it to collaborate with other institutions.MacAdam, Barbara A. “Tilman”, ''ARTnews'', Jan 2008: 132. The web site has an online log that functions as a

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

for information on exhibitions of reductive art internationally. There is also a comprehensive

directory Directory may refer to: * Directory (computing), or folder, a file system structure in which to store computer files * Directory (OpenVMS command) * Directory service, a software application for organizing information about a computer network's u ...

of related web sites for reductive art including galleries, museums and related publications, a directory of artists affiliated with Minus Space, and also artist interviews. Minus Space maintains a comprehensive

chronology Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , '' -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. I ...

of reductive and concept-based art. The chronology includes major events, exhibitions, and writings in the development of reductive and concept-based art in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...

and

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

from 1800 to date.

Footnotes

References

* MacAdam, Barbara A. “Tilman”, ''ARTnews'', Jan 2008: 132. * Maine, Stephen. “Dateline Brooklyn”, ''Artnet Magazine'', April 15, 2005. * Kalm, James. "A Boom Grows in Brooklyn", ''The Brooklyn Rail'', July 2004.
''Neighborhood Beat'': Profile on Minus Space & Michael Brennan
BCAT / Brooklyn Community Access Television, Jan. 25, Feb. 14, Feb. 19 & Feb. 23, 2007, Episode 31 * ''Machine Learning'', exhibition catalog, The Boyden Gallery of St. Mary's College of Maryland, The Painting Center, Gallery Sonja Roesch and Minus Space, 2007. Essay by Matthew Deleget. * ''Mark Dagley'', exhibition catalog, Minus Space, Abaton Book Company, 2008. Essays by Matthew Deleget and Nora Griffin, interview by Don Voisine. {{ISBN, 0-9677326-9-7 * Minus Space. 17 June 2008. * ''Minus Space: The Art of Reduction'', P.S. 1 Newspaper, Fall / Winter 2008, p. 2.

External links

Minus Space

Robert Swain">Conversation with artist Robert Swain (artist), Robert Swain
on the occasion of his new exhibitioin ''Immersive Color'' at Minus Space 2021 Arts organizations established in 2003 Contemporary art galleries in the United States Art websites Virtual museums Art museums and galleries in Brooklyn