Museums move on their own incomprehensible schedules, and the road to commercial recognition is so long and narrow that many otherwise talented artists find themselves searching for some obscure third path. When they don’t find it immediately, many carve out a path for themselves, as artists do, acting as curators, dealers, directors and publicists. In other words, artist-led spaces are often a response to what galleries and museums will not or cannot do, which is to stage site-specific installations and experimental works by talent that is not yet considered “emerging” by the market.
Subtitled NYC in Greenpoint, Brooklyn is one such space, and Jaejoon Jang is one of its gallerists. The four-year-old artist-run New York gallery was founded by the Korean-born artist in 2019 after receiving his MFA from MICA in Baltimore. “The pandemic happened and I had an unexpected pause for a year or two, during which I couldn’t really start my career as an artist seriously,” he told the Observer. “But I still wanted to do something art-related.” He knew he would need a studio and would need to pay rent and material costs, and after running the numbers, he realized it made financial sense to invite other creatives. “I also just want to introduce artists that I really like to people around me.”
Zhang had no formal curatorial training or gallery experience when she opened Subtitled NYC. The early exhibitions were modest—small paintings, small sculptures, carefully arranged but without any concrete ambition. He explains that his instinct, both in art and in life, is to start quickly and correct as he goes. He soon realized that he had to pay more attention to the actual needs of the artists he was working with.
He noted that young and emerging artists in New York often had to pay for the privilege of exhibiting: shipping fees, application fees, materials fees. He thought it was strange, so he started shouldering the costs himself. “The more exhibitions I do, the more freedom I want to give artists,” he said. “I realized how important it is to support them because it’s another way of investing in the exhibition. The more I support the artists and the exhibition, the better the exhibition will be.”
The name “subtitle” emerged as naturally as the function of the space. While researching the feasibility of the project, Zhang happened to mark a folder as “subtitle,” and the name stuck. “As an immigrant artist in New York, it resonated,” he said. “Even after 10 years in the United States, I still watch films and videos with subtitles. I don’t want to have only immigrant artists showing in galleries—I want more diversity—but ‘with subtitles’ is appropriate because there are so many different types of people in New York.”
Subtitled NYC’s guiding principle is resilience. Zhang imposed few restrictions on scale, medium, or even marketability. He is particularly interested in showing work based on experimentation and installation, which more established galleries tend to avoid because it does not fit into the standard white cube format. “I don’t want to say I’m different from other spaces because that sounds like I’m saying I’m better, but I don’t think that’s it,” he reflects. “But I’m doing something a little bit offbeat, something that can’t be easily done in other spaces… experimental, unconventional work, especially with installations, sounds and things like that. I want to show more of that.”
Since Subtitled opened, several artists Zhang has long admired have exhibited in the space. He also brought in Siobhan Liddell, who was like a mentor to him at MICA – they hadn’t seen each other in six years and the show reunited them. “Those were really important moments for me,” he said.
The current show in New York, titled “Celestial Blue,” which features selected works by Louis Bullock, Spencer Finch, Byron King and Motohiro Takeda, feels fairly traditional in its layout, but past shows have pushed the envelope. “On OtherTerms” closed in the spring, with works by Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré curated by Ho Won Kim that transformed the space into a maze, with criss-crossing wooden beams, metal and rope combined with sculptures and textiles to create an immersive environment. Song Yewan’s solo exhibition “Another Internet” curated by Brian Droitcour
Zhang gave artists a month, sometimes longer, to install, and he was happy to offer generous schedules: “Most artists in New York, even those with good careers, have other jobs. They work elsewhere and have to commute between galleries. I didn’t want to tell them to just focus on the installation and do it in three days. I tried to give them a long runway.”
He doesn’t call what he’s doing at Subtitled NYC a residency because he wants to focus on the exhibition itself, rather than the process of its creation. He said he was not interested in growing into an institution because he felt funders “would unduly interrupt or interfere with my practice.” He even turned down grant offers because the organizations attached conditions he didn’t want to meet, such as proof of pre-programming: “I didn’t want to be too restrictive—not just in terms of running artist spaces, but I didn’t want to restrict the budget, I didn’t want to restrict which artists had exhibitions, even if their work was very experimental, installation-based, site-specific, and might be difficult to sell.”
When asked to describe his vision for the future of the field, Jang responded that his goal is to continue doing what he is doing for at least the next 10 years. What he finds most satisfying is watching an artist who has shown at Subtitled NYC go on to show at larger venues. “I wanted to stay a little more amateur,” he said. “I don’t want to have too much pressure. I really like this situation and I want to keep it going.”
That is, he acknowledges that he is willing to change. “That’s my answer now,” he hedged, “but it might be different tomorrow.”