The People Behind Stephen Haller Gallery

In the lucky case, gifted artists are backed by wise supporters - such as gallery owner Stephen Haller, who represents a most exquisite list of contemporary American painters.

We had a nice chat together with his lovely wife Cynthia Griffin, a former documentary film maker. Cynthia told me how much she enjoyed her first stay in Berlin (her enthusiasm for Schöneberg and of course, Mitte) and the galleries near Kochstraße. How their gallery moved from SoHo into a former garage in Chelsea a couple of years ago and found a new inspiring environment - apart from the numerous young showrooms next door Annie Leibovitz owns a huge studio on the opposite site and used to drop by for lunch breaks with a dance crew. And about Linda Stojak's Catholic upbringing that might have influenced her ladies of sorrow.

The reason why the gallery takes charge of only a dozen artists is to pay full attention to each one of them, leading to close and lifelong ties.

An inconspicuously placed lyrical abstract water color alone generated exclaim in delight. Leaving me fantasizing about how many treasures these walls must have sheltered over the decades.

A truly touching video on Ronnie Landfield can be found via the gallery website. Enjoy.

A Woman of all Times - Linda Stojak at Stephen Haller Gallery

Her name would be Anna or Maria.... at most Catherine (or Anne, Mary, Katharina). Anyway the most universal of European female names - not a modern fashionable one. (The British only have to think of Henry VIII and would have all names together).

At first sight she is a classical European beauty, with a pretty face and a well-proportioned figure.

At second sight there is something unsettling about her and you wonder what might have happened. Is she crying? Or bleeding? Where is she coming from and where heading for? You will never know for she is aloof. And so fragile that you are afraid she might fade away in the next second.

But the longer you keep watching her she reveals a grandeur and a defiance to stand up. Painted at the present time, she is still lapped with enormous patina.

Because she is the universal woman, who has either suffered throes and lost sons in war and malady or been abandoned because of childlessness. Who has endured infidelity and just every kind of humiliation for being female. But she has never lost her dignity.

Do these women still exist today? For sure, but not so much in our ordinary perception. Where women are mostly celebrated for their luxurious shoe collection or for presenting the condoms they have used.


American painter Linda Stojak's deeply psychological portraits dealing with the existential themes of women are on exhibition at Stephen Haller Gallery until February 19, 2011.

"LINDA STOJAK: From the Moment Passed."


First photo courtesy of Stephen Haller Gallery.

galleries at west 26th st

According to online database www.artfacts.net, there are 956 private galleries in NYC. Taking the non-listed institutions into account, that would amount to over 1000. That's why it's not possible for anybody to catch a glimpse of the majority of them, also regarding the fact that gallery hours are not compatible with office hours.

So Saturdays, if not slept away completely, are the only chances to take a stroll.

I started slowly: with a single street in Westchelsea to see a group exhibition featuring the Korean-American artist Sook Jin Jo... to find it closed. It didn't matter as there was still too much to see.

Thanks to the enormous density of showcases in each respective neighborhood here, a gallery tour doesn't demand as much endurance as in other cities, where the time to arrive at one normally exceeds the time you spend in it. In some buildings you just have to get to the next floor or pass through a door to hit a different realm.

I learned later that it has not been more than a decade since this desolate spot of Manhattan turned into the the world's most important landscape for contemporary art.

What stands out right at the beginning is that here more than ever each gallery has its own distinct style and interior design.

Here are some snapshots including a lithograph by Willem de Kooning at Mary Ryan Gallery.