10 Years Later, Magenta Plains Is Still Embracing the Unexpected
An anniversary exhibition spotlights the artists who’ve made the gallery one of Lower Manhattan’s most adventurous success stories.
Olivia Smith had a thriving career running Exhibition A on the Upper East Side, a company that sells original contemporary art editions, when artists Chris Dorland and David Deutsch approached her in 2015 about opening a gallery on the Lower East Side.
Smith had worked with hundreds of artists producing limited edition prints, but she had never managed a commercial gallery or negotiated with museums before. Still, she felt a kinship with Dorland and Deutsch, who found a ground-floor storefront on Allen Street and needed help programming it. First they had to agree on a name, as long as it wasn’t their own on the door.
“We wanted something expansive and open-ended,” Smith told Hyperallergic. “We felt Magenta Plains represented a place, but we didn’t know what that place was that we were building yet.”
A decade later, Magenta Plains has helped define what the Downtown contemporary art scene can offer the world. The gallery, which outgrew its original location and currently occupies a 4,500-square-foot space at 149 Canal Street, has featured groundbreaking technology-influenced installations, sculptures, and paintings, selections of which are on display in its 10 Year Anniversary show, up through October 31.
