Below Grand is a commercial gallery and curatorial collective located at 53 Orchard St on the Lower East Side of New York. Steered by artists, the gallery aims to provide artists with an enriching gallery experience; one that builds solidarity, community, and safe harbor through its understanding of the stresses and material circumstances involved with engaging with the commercial art market. Below Grand’s ultimate goal is the development of a polyphonic, multivalent artistic community; with the intention of creating a horizontal structure of empowerment through the linking of multiple communities. Providing context through curation, the gallery is focused on introducing new artists to the New York art community while addressing imbalance through curation. Below Grand is passionate about curation as an act of discovery, recovery, and restoration with the understanding that curation is an act of identifying already present communities and building a visual counterculture.
What do we owe each other?
How can we do more here?
Andrew Paul Woolbright (American, b. 1986) Founded Below Grand (formerly Super Dutchess) in March 2017. He is an MFA graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in painting and is currently a resident at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Residency in DUMBO. Woolbright is a contributor to The Brooklyn Rail, and his work has been exhibited with The Hole, the Ada Gallery, Nancy Margolis, Zurcher Gallery New York, and Coherent Brussels. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, TimeOut New York, ArtViewer, Two Coats of Paint, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Reader, and the Providence Journal and his work is currently in the collection of the RISD Museum. He has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and currently teaches at SUNY New Paltz and The School of Visual Arts in New York. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Nakai Falcón (b. 1997) is an independent curator based in New York. His practice primarily focuses on collaborations with creatives in POC and Queer communities exploring memory, otherness and relations tied across the human condition. Nakai received his BA in Anthropology from SUNY Purchase and an MA in Design History & Curatorial Studies from Parsons School of Design.
Brittany Adeline King is an artist and curator currently pursuing her MFA at Hunter College. She has exhibited and curated extensively, including exhibitions at Company Gallery and Shoot the Lobster in New York; and has curated exhibitions with White Columns and Gallery Albany.
Mo Kong is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. They are currently residing in Queens, NY. They received an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Their work is deeply impacted by the social events, coded by the “educational information system” to post questions about the current politic environment. Their research-led process usually takes the form of large scale installations involving scientific research and multiple journalism perspectives in which they challenge key issues of the day using complex narratives that synthesize the past with the present.The systems they build normally merge multiple environmental crisis and social politic issues, through scientific research and social investigation, they find the similarity of two systems and bring them to one narrative storyline .
Andy Rosenwald (b. 1995, Baltimore, Maryland) is a curator based in New York. Through his experience working at multiple galleries, museums, and art advisory firms, Rosenwald has developed a management paradigm to support emerging artists cultivate a more stable and ethical practice in an effort to benefit themselves as well as the community around them. As a fervent observer of life, Rosenwald’s curatorial interests breach the relationships between time and experience and seeks to cultivate a holistic understanding of the individual within the sphere of the collective.
Aparna Sarkar is a painter in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (2021) and a BA in Mathematics from Pomona College (2014). Aparna had a solo show at Tappeto Volante Gallery in Brooklyn last fall; otherwise, she has shown with galleries across the Northeast and LA. Previous residencies include MASS MoCA, Jentel Foundation, and Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, among others. While Aparna is primarily an oil painter, her practice encompasses drawing, printmaking, and ceramics. Recently, she has been making still-life paintings that deal in abstraction and pattern, from observation of Indian family textiles and other objects.
Yefeng earned his MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. His projects have been featured in exhibitions internationally, including the BRIC Biennial, the OCAT Biennial, the Bangkok Art Biennale, CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art (NY, USA), Gasworks London (LDN, UK), Pylon Lab (DRS, DE), Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing (BJ, CN), Shanghai K11 Museum (SH, CN), Vanguard Gallery (SH, CN), etc. Yefeng has also been awarded solo exhibitions, residencies, and fellowships at K11 Art Foundation (WH, CN), Smack Mellon (NY, USA), International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) (NY, USA), New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation (NY, USA), Asia Art Archive in America (NY, USA), MacDowell (NH, USA), and Vermont Studio Center (VT, USA), among others.
Past Members
Earth Aengel
Gilles Heno-Coe
Cima Rahmankhah
Wretched Flowers
Wangui Maina
Reilly Davidson
Amanda Nedham
Kyle Hittmeier
Ernesto Renda
Jay Payton