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L’uso dei materiali e il catalogo per Angelo Mangiarotti: la forma non si impone ma si ottiene per incastri, gravità e resistenza. Il libro Framing the Project (Corraini) ne ripercorre il gesto
ISSUE NO. 31
Daniel and Sam Kapp’s interest for art galleries arose at a young age and has grown over time through their working experiences: Sam worked previously for Dominique Lévy Gallery while Daniel for Marian Goodman Gallery. The decision of founding their own gallery dates back to 2019, when the Kapp twins opened Kapp Kapp in Philadelphia.
One year later, the gallery moved into an artist studio building in Tribeca, New York. The Kapp brothers felt the need for expansion and in January 2022 they relocated into a space at 86 Walker Street, which is where Kapp Kapp currently is. As Daniel said: «After having been in our old New York space for the last two years, we were bursting at the seams there. I think mentally we were ready for more space».
Right before having their first show in the new space, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Just like any other industry, the art gallery scene had to slow down and Kapp Kapp started to pop up on New Yorker’s radar slower than planned. The upswing dates back to the end of 2022, thanks to Luke O’Halloran’s solo exhibition and to a program of underrepresented queer artists.
The Kapp’s twin brothers found their dimension in Tribeca. As Daniel Kapp explains, Tribeca’s old buildings carry a storied history. «Before we moved in, the space already had this warm energy. There are histories that live in these buildings. There’s something inherently about space having this kind of biting energy already that we had sort of immediately responded to».
When organizing an exhibition, the Kapp brothers do not decide themselves where an artwork will be placed in the space. They let the artworks decide where they belong. Nothing is pre-planned or determined before the piece is physically present in the gallery. Being in the space with the artworks while studying their resonance in the gallery and analyzing how the pieces could speak to each other has become part of a natural process, which involves Daniel and Sam together.
He explains: «I know some galleries will sort of preplan before the works even arrive in the gallery, like making a gallery mark card, printing out images of the artworks. We don’t operate like that at all. Unless the artist has a strong idea of how they want the show to look, and I welcome it as well».
Bringing diversity into Kapp Kapp is something on which the brothers have been focusing since the beginning of their career. Kapp Kapp exhibitions strive to provide a platform for diverse ranges of artists, creating space for historically underrepresented voices across many media, especially queer artists. As Daniel Kapp states: «A good deal of the artists the Kapp’s worked with would identify themselves as queer, whatever definition you choose to use that word».
Kapp Kapp aims to be a contemporary art gallery and more than anything to be a reflection of contemporary life, giving artists the space to represent their reality at Kapp Kapp. This has been their guiding principle from the beginning. As Daniel Kapp confirms: «There has never had to be this reinvention. That is just the way we have built ourselves. We want to reflect the world».
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Daniel and Sam Kapp are conscious about their social privileges. Choosing to show queer art means to support queer people. As Daniel Kapp states: «I don’t claim that this is a unique thought whatsoever, but being in a position of selecting artists and working with them in the gallery comes with a power». Thus far, Kapp Kapp had six shows at the gallery in 2022 and it currently represents seven artists.
Daniel and Sam Kapp are conscious about how significant the choice of supporting an underrepresented artist in a gallery is and how this opportunity could change the whole direction of an artist’s career. «We have seen that happen».
Another founding principle of Kapp Kapp is to create and build a legacy for the artist’s careers. Being a commercial gallery means to support the lives of the artists whom they decide to have relationships with. On account of this, Kapp Kapp started to create original scholarship funds around the artworks that they are showing.
Tribeca’s interest in queer art has developed over time. Between the galleries with a queer roster in the neighborhood of Tribeca, the Kapp brothers consider Bortolami Gallery, Queer Thoughts and PPOW the first art spaces around which a queer community has started to grow over time. As Daniel Kapp illustrates, what makes their programs unique are the different approaches that each gallery has to queer matters, which has always elicited a positive response in the neighborhood.
«Generally I would say the community and Tribeca are special and sort of unlike any other gallery neighborhood in New York that I have experienced. It’s communal, supportive and it definitely extends to our queer programming».
Kapp Kapp will soon publish its first book catalog, a project that has been in the works for the last few years. The book will be a 150 page catalog with an essay commissioned by an art historian in New York and an interview with the New York artist Stanley Stellar.
Stanley Stellar is an artist which Kapp Kapp has represented. The artist not only inaugurated Kapp Kapp in Philadelphia but also held an exhibition in January and February 2022. His show focused on photographs shot in the mid seventies until the early eighties at The Piers in New York, a gathering place for the male gay community. The Piers started to be dismantled after the first cases of AIDS eradicated among the queer community. Stanley Stellar spent time there before the place was demolished, taking photos of pre-AIDS New York.
Back then, only a small portion of Stellar’s pictures were made into prints. Kapp Kapp gave Stanley Stellar the chance to showcase photos which never saw the light of day before. As Daniel Kapp explained: «We experienced a sort of virality with that show. There is this sort of fire that catches when Stanley Stellar organizes a show».
Kapp Kapp has already set up the roster for 2023 and the following year. Daniel and Sam Kapp are going to host a few artists who have never been part of their program before, but who fit into the Kapp Kapp world. Daniel Kapp promises the audience «a queer year, diverse across every definition of that word».
The Kapp twins are going to host the Jimenez twins Sydnie and Haylie, who have a shared practice where they make pieces together, but they also create individual work. In addition to paper, the Jimenez sisters work primarily in ceramic, realizing large scale pieces. This show is going to be the first ceramic based show at Kapp Kapp, since the gallery never engaged with ceramics and sculptures in the past years.
The next exhibition on the list will be the European based painter Alex Foxton. The artist has created a whole body of work in response to Stanley Stellar’s images of queer people in New York City, which are going to be showcased for the first time at Kapp Kapp. For the following months, the audience can expect Velvet Other Worlds in June, Sydney Vernon in September and the return of Hannah Beerman in November.
86 Walker St., 4th Fl. New York, NY 10013. Kapp Kapp is a contemporary art gallery dedicated to working with underrepresented queer artists, also producing original scholarship. Founded by the twin brothers Daniel and Sam Kapp in early 2019 in Philadelphia, the gallery expanded and moved to the Tribeca neighborhood in New York in 2022, where it is now located.
ISSUE NO. 31
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Culture today means sustainability – in its honest meaning.
Culture has always been about human respect, tolerance. It’s not only about accepting human diversity but it’s about searching for the beauty of every human peculiarity.
Inclusion is the first value that defines art. Culture today means one thing only: to be part of a community, to think as a community.
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