Aaron Rose, Young Sleek and Full of Hell | For ten years, New York’s Alleged Gallery provided a breeding ground and played the role of willing accomplice to some of the most vibrant American art to come along in decades. By exhibiting the then emerging talents of Mark Gonzales, Chris Johanson, Rita Ackermann, Susan Cianciolo, Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, Thomas Campbell and Terry Richardson, much of Alleged’s impact was due to a complete and utter disregard for the status quo.
Alleged Gallery. New York/Tokyo/Los Angeles - 1992-2002
For just over 10 years, throughout the 1990's, I ran a small art gallery in New York called The Alleged Gallery. The name comes from those 7 day spiritual good luck candles that you can buy in pretty much and NYC bodega. The candles always had the word "alleged" as a disclaimer just in case your luck goes south while you're burning them. The gallery began when I found an old supermarket sign lying on the street and decided to paint over it and hang it up over the storefront me and my friends lived in. It was never supposed to be a business, and to be honest, owning an art galery was never a dream of mine. But sometimes life throws curveballs and thankfully this was one that I chose to take a swing at. Over those 10 years I met the people who have provided the foundation of my creative network ever since. Everything you see on this website relates back somehow, however abstractly, to the people I met during those formative years in New York. While I've moved on to different projects now, and I havent been in the gallery business for over a decade, I still look back on those years fondly. Sometimes I find it laughable, but they were the years where we all began to find ourselves. Our creative voices were young and impressionable. We got wasted and rode skateboards till all hours of the night and we fell in love again every day. We were stupid and it was great. Below is an essay that Carlo McCormick wrote about the gallery just after it closed in 2002. Of all the things written at the time, I really think Carlo said it the best. We'll continue to update this page with new photos as we find them in the archive. –Aaron Rose
Aaron Rose, Young Sleek and Full of Hell
Softcover, 17x24 cm, 224 pages | Drago Publisher | ISBN: 978-88-88493-32-8
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