Earlier this month, artistic advisor Lisa Schiff abruptly closed his gallery space in New York less than a week after being hit by a highly publicized “Ponzi scheme” lawsuit. The move left more questions than answers.
This was especially true for photographer Richelle Rich, who was scheduled to open an exhibition at Schiff’s SFA advisory space on June 7.
“I am sad to say that unexpectedly the gallery has closed”, Rich wrote on Instagram at the time. “We will no doubt learn the full story as things unfold in the press, but right now I’m pretty devastated.”
But Rich, who considers herself a “political and conceptual artist,” was determined that the exhibition would continue. “I just didn’t want his story to define mine,” she told Artnet News by phone. “I just wanted to move on.”
Move on, she did. The artist will open his exhibition in early June as planned, although it will look a little different and have nothing to do with Schiff. Instead, it will take place for just one night out of the sevene floor of a walk-up building in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City.
Rich will not be showing the prints she had planned for SFA, but rather a film that includes some 200 images from the same corpus. The series, titled “Comeflor,” features photos of flowers, fruits, and other everyday objects that, for her, symbolize larger ideas and moments in time.
“Through them, I document the social, political and historical events that I witness,” she wrote of her subjects in an advert for the revised show. “Deadly poisonous flowers, glass from a shipwreck, custom-made needles, ephemera, and detritus bring these intertwined narratives to life. These are secrets hidden in plain sight.
Richelle Rich, Comeflor (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Rich was introduced to Schiff through a mutual acquaintance. “Lisa was only ever really supportive of me and my work,” she said of their relationship.
The artist learned of SFA’s closure from Schiff herself on the morning of May 15. “It was really shocking,” she recalled, noting the five months of work she had put into preparing for the show, which was to be her first solo. exhibition in America and the first exhibition of any kind in New York.
“It was so huge to me,” she continued, adding that it was meant to be a “comeback show.”
But after an hour of sulking, Rich got back to work. In about a week, she lined up a space on Eldridge Street, a studio used by a film editing company. When asked how she was able to get it on such short notice, the artist laughed, then simply said, “Begging.”
Reflecting on the past two weeks, having canceled and then reconfirmed a show, Rich took a step back and considered the experience in the context of his now 30-year-old art practice. “It was just another challenge,” she said.
“Here’s one I made earlier“ is the name of the artist’s exhibition, which has been given a new title for the new space. The opening is scheduled for June 7.
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