Every week, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column of original scoops. If you have a tip, email Annie Armstrong at aarmstrong@artnet.com.
FIXING YOUR BREAKOUTS WHILE COLLECTING BREAKOUT ARTWORK
Attention, attention! I have the scoop on a newcomer to the overflowing art scene in Tribeca. Is it a scrappy emerging gallery from Brooklyn? Nope! A plucky Los Angeles transplant? Try again! A dinosaur from Chelsea looking for fresh blood? Not quite!
It’s Dr. Evan Rieder, dermatologist to the art stars. At 36 North Moore Street, just down the block from our beloved watering hole, Walker’s, the good doctor has opened an office brimming with art. “It wasn’t an accident that we opened here,” Dr. Rieder told me on a recent afternoon between appointments. “People come in from the galleries. Now it’s easier for them to pop in. We see the artists, the gallerists, the directors. We’re nicely situated, and we wanted the aesthetic of the place to have a Tribeca feeling.”
That it does. I’ve conducted around one billion interviews with gallerists about why they decided to open in Tribeca, and Dr. Rieder is among the aesthetes who drool over the neighborhood’s high ceilings, historic finishings, and ample wall space. He opened the office just over a month ago, and he has hung work by Jo Messer, Robin F. Williams, Eva LeWitt, and Grace Carney throughout the offices.
“That piece felt like a Leonardo to me,” he said of the Carney, a deep-red figurative painting that hangs behind the reception desk. “I bought it straight from her studio.” The doctor introduced Carney to Eden Deering, a director at the nearby P.P.O.W. gallery, which now represents her.
Dr. Evan Rieder. Courtesy of Dr. Evan Rieder.
Rieder sees dermatology as an aesthetic field, and he’s not the only one in his line of work to have a thing for art. He told me that another dermatologist, Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien, opened the door to collecting for him back when he was at NYU for med school. “He was very famous in the 1980s because he was the first dermatologist to describe the physical stigma of AIDS,” Rieder said. Working with AIDS patients put Friedman-Kien in touch with many members of the Downtown art scene, and while he was working, he picked up a bit of a collecting habit. He “collected [Ab-Ex work] back when it cost nothing,” Rieder said. “He went to Cy Twombly’s studio and bought a painting for, like, $300. Sotheby’s is always banging down his door now.”
Rieder started collecting from local galleries, snapping up work by Emily Mae Smith and Baseera Khan from Simone Subal Gallery before they had their big breaks. His most recent purchase was a piece by Leslie Martinez from Chapter NY.
Dermatologists are not the only art-inclined doctors, of course. Rieder is a close friend of Avo Samuelian, the Manhattan dentist who displays works by Matt Connors, Nicolás Guagnini, Karin Schneider, and Terence Koh in his office. As I previously reported, Samuelian is known for allowing artists to trade artworks for his services. Messer told Wet Paint that she’s been happy to barter work for dermatological attention. “I love trading because it feels free,” she said. “Dr. Rieder is great. He makes me pretty and he loves art!”
Another artist who sees Rieder as a dermatologist and also as a patron is Chloe Wise, who used his services to help remove a scar. He owns a self-portrait by Wise.
“I like seeing a doctor who, while masterfully administering laser-scar removal on my very sensitive and injury prone face, can also talk to me about art,” Wise said. “It makes it hurt less. I consider him a friend, too. He’s got great taste and that’s important.”
Only in New York City, folks.
WE HEAR
The first thing on my Christmas list this year will be a jar of honey cultivated from Ed Ruscha’s citrus grove outside of his Los Angeles studio… Petzel is set to close its Uptown space on East 67th Street sometime in the New Year and shift all of its operations to Chelsea. According to a statement from founder Friedrich Petzel: “Our artists are of primary importance to us, and after careful consideration, we’re aligning our plans with their aspirations and needs.” … There seems to be a whole lot of turnover of at Pace recently, doesn’t there?… It remains true that all the money remains in Aspen: You can start out as chief preparator of the Aspen Art Museum with a six-figure salary… Professional fanboy alert: How satisfying was it to see Klaus Biesenbach put out the ask on Instagram for Caroline Polachek to perform in Paris, and then see her deliver in such a big way only a week later?…
GRIEVANCES
Welcome back to another installment of “Grievances.” This week, we have a contribution from Paula Panczenko, the founder of the University of Wisconsin’s fine art publishing arm Tandem Press. Panczenko’s grievance: the implicit elitism in the lack of public information about the art on view at art fairs…
I am always horrified by major galleries not putting up any information beside artworks at art fairs. It indicates that if you have to ask who created the artwork, you shouldn’t even come into the booth. It is elitist and the height of snobbishness and very sad indeed. I went to my first art fair 60 years ago with my parents and it changed my life. Art dealers need to realize that education is also part of their mission.
What has been bothering you? Send your contribution to me at aarmstrong@artnet.com with the subject line “GRIEVANCES.”