COURTESY THE ARTIST AND REGINA REX
Another art gallery in Downtown Manhattan has closed, with Regina Rex announcing in an email that it has shuttered its spot on Madison Street but with plans to continue to present shows in other ways. “It was a great pleasure and privilege to be a part of that community for three years and to represent four outstanding artists: Corey Escoto, Dave Hardy, EJ Hauser, and Nancy Haynes,” the gallery said. “While we will no longer represent artists at this time, we will continue to champion all of those artists we have worked with over the last seven years in whatever ways possible and plan to continue contributing to New York’s tumultuous art and exhibition scene.”
Regina Rex was started by a baker’s dozen of artists, including Yevgeniya Baras, Jeff DeGolier, Eli Ping, Lauren Portada, and Max Warsh, at 17-17 Troutman Street, a sprawling building in Ridgewood, Queens, where it hosted impressively outré-minded group shows alongside one- and two-person outings by artists like Megan Pflug, Gregory Green, Takashi Horisaki, and Klea McKenna. It also participated in fleeting, fondly remembered events like Bushwick Basel and the Dependent Art Fair, and moved to the Lower East Side in 2014.
The news of Regina Rex’s gallery closure comes amid a string of small- and mid-sized galleries closing in New York over the past couple years, including On Stellar Rays, CRG, Laurel Gitlen, and many more.
Regina Rex, however, is not completely ceasing its operations. It said that it will participate in the gallery show program Condo in Mexico City in April and that it will be involved with an exhibition of University of Georgia MFA students, which is being organized by writer and curator Wendy Vogel. (More details are forthcoming.)
“We thank you for your continued support of Regina Rex, and we hope you can join us for these future exhibitions,” the group said in an email that was signed by its current team, Katherine Aungier, Yevgeniya Baras, Alta Buden, Jeff DeGolier, Theresa Ganz, Alyssa Gorelick, Lauren Portada, Max Warsh, and Siebren Versteeg.