Chicago’s Volume Gallery Triples in Size with a Move to West Town

Many art galleries around the world have closed over the past few years amid the market downturn. But one Chicago company moved to a new neighborhood and tripled in size. Volume Gallery will open Feb. 13 in a 3,500-square-foot space designed by co-founders Claire Warner and Sam Vinz at 1700 West Hubbard Street, across from mainstream artists Mariane Ibrahim and Monique Meloche. This is the gallery’s third space since opening in 2010.

If expanding a gallery during a market downturn seems counterintuitive, Warner and Ventz know how to make the best of a bad situation. They met while working as specialists at Wright Auctions, and both were laid off during the 2008 recession. “I set a record for the shortest hours there,” Vinz said. He was hired in May and fired two weeks later (with at least three months of severance pay). Warner was fired a few months later.

“I thought a lot about that time when we were going through such chaos,” she told art news. “This is a great time to grow!”

The inaugural exhibition, “Heretics of the Legacy,” explores what Warner calls a time when “heresy became the norm,” including Selva Aparicio, Richard Artschwager, Garry Knox Bennett, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Howard Kottler, William J. O’Brien and Joyce Scott (some of whom also worked in mediums often classified as crafts), as well as architect Stanley Tigerman and his team. Robert Venturi and Dennis Scott Brown.

Members of the gallery include Atlanta-based president Robell Awake; New York designer Abigail Chang; Chicago architect Ania Jaworska; New York design duo Snarkitecture; Chicago architect Tigerman; and New York artist Thaddeus Wolfe, who works in glass. The first year will be programmed by Tanya Aguiñiga, Joe Feddersen, Christy Matson, Jonathan Muecke and Terumi Saito.

“We have always had a holistic view of art and have always strived to break down hierarchies, so building a foundation of materiality has always been crucial to us,” Vinz said during a video call. For example, fiber arts, ceramics, glass, and design objects have been part of the Volume program, which means they can do business not only with the museum’s contemporary art curators, but also with curators from other departments.

This has clearly paid off, as Volume has exhibited nearly 100 works in major museums internationally, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts; the Pérez Museum of Art, Miami; the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In the past two years alone, its shows and artists have also earned the attention of publications including: art newsthis Los Angeles TimesNPR, art forum, wallpaperWBEZ and bomb Magazine.

Of course, there are many museums dedicated to breaking down the boundaries between art and design, including R & Co. and Salon 94, both in New York alone. However, when asked which galleries they felt they could resonate with in different categories, the founders looked more to the past and mentioned Max Protetch. He opened a gallery in Washington, D.C., in 1969, then moved to New York, where he remained open until closing in 2009, 40 years later. “He showed Scott Burton the side [architect] Tadao Ando,” Warner said. “It’s fascinating to see those two worlds come together. ”

“Of course, in the ’80s, Burton broke away from fine art,” Vinz interjects, reminding him of Chicago stalwart Rhona Hoffman. “Even with Lorna, part of her show was always work from people like James Vines or Vito Acconci, people who were on the fringes of the art market,” he said. “This is where we’ve always wanted to be.”