Lance Fung Gallery

Lance Fung Gallery was established at 537 Broadway in New York City in 1996 and shared an exhibition space with Emily Harvey Gallery. It closed its doors in 2003. Previously, Lance Fung had been the director of Holly Solomon Gallery for several years. The venue emerged when Lance Fung and Nam June Paik approached Emily Harvey suggesting the two galleries cooperate in the space. The result was a vigorous and ambitious schedule of exhibitions which inspired the New York art scene during its functioning years.

The history of Lance Fung Gallery is divided into two periods. The First Five Years, 1996 to 2001, driven by a general return to process, experimentalism and solidarity in the 1990’s art scene. The period was communal, contrasting the hyper commercial 1980’s art boom. Another driver was kinship with other periods of solidarity and experimentalism in art such as associated with the 1960’s Fluxus era, the 1970’s process artists and the lesser known, but equally important art events of the early 1980’s in Poland under the Solidarity movement. The second period from 2001 to 2003 was marked by the effects of 9/11 on New York City in general, a migration of art galleries from downtown’s SoHo to midtown’s Chelsea, interest in distributed curatorial activities and the conclusion of the gallery space.

Lance Fung Gallery opened its doors in 1996 with an exhibition by Shigeko Kubota, to showcase this artist’s work. Going forward the gallery built a solid reputation as an innovative venue for Intermedia, site-specific and process based art and installation. The gallery encouraged experimentation with ideas and materials, allowed an artist run layer to dialogue within its overall process and introduced chosen emerging artists in context with highly established artists.

Among many artists who showed at Lance Fung Gallery, permanent artists of the first five years include Shigeko Kubota, Gordon Matta-Clark, Joshua Selman, Tristano Di Robilant, Jessica Higgins, Suzanne Harris, Lars Chellberg, Anthony Sorce, Erika Knerr and John Roloff. The gallery website later featured a final list of artists which also included Peter Hutchinson and Nam June Paik.

External links

*cite web|url=http://fungcollaboratives.org|title=Fung Collaboratives
*cite web|url=http://artistorganizedart.org/commons/2008/05/lance-fung-interviewed-creating.html|title=Lance Fung Interviewed: Creating Community at Lucky Number 7 |date=2008-05-03|publisher=Artist Organized Art
*cite web|url=http://www.artistorganizedart.org/commons/2005/06/artist-organized-art-and-lance-fung.html|title=Artist Organized Art and Lance Fung Gallery|date=2005-06-02|publisher=Artist Organized Art
*cite news|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00E5DA1F39F93AA25754C0A960958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink |title=Sculpture With Video and a Lot of Activity |last=Glueck|first=Grace|date=1996-07-19|work=Art review|publisher=New York Times
*cite news|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E7D91738F932A25755C0A96F958260|title='Wall Drawings' |last=Smith|first=Roberta|date=1999-06-11|work=Art in review|publisher=New York Times