“Park Place Gallery: Founders and Friends, Then and Now”

Patsy Krebs, "Tunisia," 1966, gouache on paper, 7 3/4 x 7 3/4"

“Park Place Gallery: Founders and Friends, Then and Now”

David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

by Jordan Eddy

When David Richard Gallery was located in Santa Fe’s Railyard Arts District, the space was best-known for its exhibitions of Op Art from the 1960’s to the present. A move to Pacheco Street in 2015 marked a clear shift in the gallery’s direction. Historic works still hide in the back corners, but young, emerging artists have stormed its front galleries. Starting with a new wave of local art collectives and experimental projects immediately recast the program’s identity, and it’s still riding that momentum. A new exhibition of the Park Place Gallery artists represents an engaging confluence of the two curatorial approaches. The artist-run gallery opened in lower Manhattan in 1962, and united a group of irascibles who would come to define the Op Art movement and elevate post-minimalism. Many of the space’s founding members had moved to New York from the West Coast, and they swiftly engaged with up-and-coming New Yorkers such as Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, Eva Hesse and Joan Jonas. The gallery moved to SoHo in 1965 and closed two years later. “Park Place Gallery: Founders and Friends, Then and Now" features old and new work by lesser known core of founding members Dean Fleming, Edwin Ruda and Leo Valledor, along with contributions by a smattering of artists who were part of the Park Place circle. Young upstarts in Santa Fe ought to swing by to bask in the vibrational energy of a collective that has passed into the realm of legend. Perhaps Pacheco Street is the next SoHo.

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