carriage trade
Through presenting primarily group exhibitions, carriage trade functions not as a means to promote the careers of individual artists, but to provide contexts for their work that reveal its relevance to larger social and political conditions prevalent today. Presenting exhibitions that attempt to highlight this relevance over the value of any given artist’s work within the hierarchy of the art market, the shows tend to combine well known with lesser known artists, and historical pieces (70’s, 80’s, 90’s) with very recent work. Relevant found (archival) material is often integrated into the shows as a means of broadening the scope of an art exhibition by positioning the “evidence” of everyday experience in direct relation to an artist’s mediation of social conditions.
Some themes addressed in the exhibitions have included issues of propaganda in mass media, the effect of neo-liberal policies on the built environment and social relations, as well as the concept of “mistaken identity” and likeness within the realm portraiture. The gallery’s first shows were on Prince Street in Soho, a neighborhood which, once a base of small manufacturing and warehouses in the late seventies and early eighties, and then artist’s lofts and art galleries until the early nineties, has primarily returned to the role it played as a high-end shopping district in the mid-1800’s, during America’s "first" Gilded Age. carriage trade is now located at 277 Grand Street. carriagetrade.org
