The Drawing Room is Off the Wall

ABOVE: THE DRAWING ROOM. IMAGE COURTESY OF ARTBRIDGE AND COPYRIGHT SAUL METNICK

Inside a converted utility closet in Chelsea is The Drawing Room, a gallery by the public art initiative The ArtBridge. The 78-square-foot space opens their 2013 season with “About Space,” showing works by Tatiana Berg, Matt Jones, Joey Piziali, Jason Stopa and Hiroshi Tachibana [through Apr. 11].

Now in its second year, The Drawing Room hosts four exhibitions a year of emerging artists who are otherwise unrepresented by galleries. Originally conceived by Jordana Zeldin and guest curator Jason Stopa to feature works of an interstellar galactic variety, the tiny size of the gallery inevitably influences one’s sense of infinite space.

In the group show, 29-year-old gallery director Zeldin “felt a need for art to come off the wall.” While most of the works comprise hanging canvases, Tatiania Berg’s volcanic shaped sculpture, Just Tent (2011), proclaimed by the artist to be a “three-dimensional painting” on wheels, provides “a sense of travel and lends a kind of playfulness to the work.” Paintings by Tachibana, Jones, Piziali, and Stopa relate to one another in scope and subject, with shapes and colors that convene towards a vacant center. Jason Stopa’s painting, The Fortress of Solitude (for Kathy) (2013), references Superman’s private Arctic hideaway and stands out as a nostalgic excursion into childhood wonderment with its blue and white swirled center surrounded by globs of white paint spelling out the title at the perimeter.