Past tense in Seattle: the space curator Dan Cameron called “probably the most visually stunning commercial art space in the U.S., outstripping any comparable venue in either Chelsea or Culver City.”
Cameron on Lawrimore Project:
The space is huge, and, more importantly, has been broken up by the Seattle firm Lead Pencil Studios into a cluster of rooms, each of which has an extremely precise character. Tall ceilings and indirect natural light are balanced by a renovation that leaves just enough of the original building’s quirks intact so that walking into Lawrimore feels like stepping into every artist’s ideal vision of an art gallery.
That gallery, now demised, was 5,000 square feet. Last night, Scott Lawrimore opened its replacement – a white box storefront in Pioneer Square, at 117 S. Main Street. Blink and you’ll miss it. Spanning no more than 150 square feet, it could fit into his old restroom with space left over for toilet and sink.
How does it look? Lovely. Radically cool. White-on-white-in-white with high ceilings and crystalline light. In a corner is a built-in bench with a Beuysian gray felt pad. Lawrimore’s calling that bench his office.
Is he kidding? He’s gotta be kidding. I don’t think he’s kidding. The new is everything the old wasn’t- modest, mute, reductive, clean, cheap.
Isaac Layman had the last show in the old space and has the first in the new one. Instead of his large, pellucid previous, he offers fragmentary gestures and a few props lined up along the wall.
Seen in person, the unphotographable image below looks like a watercolor of a birch tree smeared on its edge with faint blue and pink. Instead, it’s blank photo paper he rubbed on the corner of a room.
Hallway Corner, Red Wall, White Moulding, 2010
Inkjet photo paper, interior house paint
16 x 16 in.
Lawrimore opened in 2006. Is he planning to spend his next four years in this closet? Not bloody likely. As an intermission, however, it’s a score.
Regina. Of course he’s kidding. Don’t play poker. You’d lose your house and home.