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With galleries in three bustling hotspots—New York City, Berlin, and now, London—Strychnin Gallery is a playground for artists from all around the globe. It is a place where collaboration is encouraged, new projects are constantly developed, and creativity is the one thing that truly counts.
Curator and owner Yasha Young is dedicated to presenting emerging American artists to the European art world and vice versa, features a variety of artists with particular individual styles rather than artists belonging to a collective “hip” movement.
Ranging from painting to sculpture, photography to doll making, Strychnin has a feeling for the extraordinary and the unique: the beautiful, the sublime, the grotesque, the dark, the peculiar, and the comical. Featured works are suffused by popular culture—comics, TV, fantasy, science fiction, Google, film noir—making them highly accessible, yet they are also inspired by “high art”, paying homage to the Baroque, to medieval hagiography, or the Renaissance, blurring distinctions and pre-existing notions, resulting in contradictions that cannot easily be resolved. They are finally more about a personal feeling than a universal claim. What is the viewer to make of a surreal, fantastic illustration done in silverpoint? Far from presenting a mere random selection of purely referential works, however, Young’s specific talent lies in making choices that cherish the individual, both artist and viewer, and thrive on the contradictions we all carry within us.
Founded in Brooklyn in 1998, the gallery opened a European showroom in Berlin in 2002. The U.S. gallery has since moved to a location in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, opening with a group show featuring over 70 artists in October, 2006. A year later Strychnin opened a third location in East London’s vibrant art scene right off of Brick Lane in October, 2007.
From March 5 to 9, Strychnin and the 5-star Hotel 3.14 are organizing the Fusion 5 Festival in Cannes, France. The international festival not only features over 20 of Strychnin’s cutting-edge contemporary artists but also over 20 DJs from all around the globe who are selected in collaboration with MySpace. For the duration of an exciting long weekend, 20 of the hotel’s luxury suites will be turned into individual artist showrooms, each with an individual soundtrack. Doors will be open to the public on March 9 from noon until 6 p.m. A group show in the lobby, opening on March 7, will remain installed at the Hotel 3.14 during the Cannes Film Festival.
