Part of the crowd inside the Kentler

Friday, February 8th, was the opening night of the new exhibit Native Voices at the Kentler International Drawing Space, a 501c3 gallery established in Red Hook, Brooklyn in 1990. For NAICA and Longviews, Red Hook is like going to New Jersey. That means it’s highly inconvenient to get there. We had to take a train and then a bus to get there, but I am glad we did.

(For the record, associate editor, Sonny Grant lives down the block from the gallery thes rest us live up in Queens).
Surprisingly, I say surprisingly ’cause of aforementioned distance, there was a large turnout for this all native contemporary “wordks on paper” show. More surprisingly, the crowd was ethnically diverse, not just the usual suspects we always see at these events, meaning Natives and friends of Natives.; not that there is anything wrong with the usual suspects but they’re already in the know. Contemporary native art needs to find a larger, more diverse audience, somehow the Native Voices show did exactly that.

The space itself is not unlike a lot of other small galleries in that it is basically one long hall; not exactly narrow but not wide enough to be the traditional square art space. It was large enough to contain a decent sized crowd as well as a snack and wine table at which some very good Malbec was served. For the record Longviews correspondents, Sonny Grant and myself, had two small cups each. We don’t condone drunkeness but do condone social drinking especially when the drink is actually good. For more information on the gallery check out their wesbite: www.kentlergallery.org.

The exhibit, co-curated by Raquel Chapa and Deborah Everett, was as diverse as the audience representing many genres of works on paper, as well as, levels of technical excellence. That’s a nice way of saying some of the artists seemed to not have as much technical prowess as others while some had plenty prowess but lacked conceptual knowledge or consideration. All in all though, an important step in getting native contemporary work into galleries not directly associated with the native community-not that there is anything wrong with native-centric galleries-as long as they aren’t in Santa Fe. HA!

The show runs through March 23 and makes a tour of Brooklyn stopping at Long Island University and FiveMyles. For more information on this show and other topics hit up our very first podcast of the new year located below.

Views from the gallery:

Artist, Mario Martinez points out the wine and cheese table.

Curator, Raquel Chapa, interviewed by anonymous white dudes.

Some works by Lorenzo Clayton

Frank Big Bear’s wicked cool Timezones 1985-86

Detail, Untitled (Bicultural) 2006, Artist Jason Lujan

Best in Show (solely the opinion of NAICA online and Longviews):

Kay Walkingstick’s, We’re Still Here, 2004

All photos: M Colon

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