THIRTY SOMETHING Jack Barrett looks ahead to the 2024 Dallas Art Fair and to introduce the work of young artists. INTERVIEW BY ADAM GREEN
Timothy Lai’s exhibition Double Wall (installation view) at Jack Barrett Gallery.
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allas Art Fair exhibitor Jack Barrett Gallery, founded in 2015, nurtures and exhibits emerging artists working across a variety of disciplines. In 2022, the gallery joined New York’s f lourishing Tribeca neighborhood, where it commits its 3,000-square-foot space to represented artists while also pursuing the up-and-coming. Adam Green caught up with the gallery’s founder here. Adam Green (AG): Jack, thanks so much for chatting with us. I think your gallery program is really fantastic; you show a lot of exciting artists. For readers who may be new to Jack Barrett, tell us a little bit more about your gallery. Jack Barrett (JB): It’s been such a pleasure working with you and getting to know the Green Family Art Foundation, as well as the larger Dallas art ecosystem. The gallery is in the Tribeca neighborhood of lower Manhattan, where we’ve been for the past two years. We represent a small but expanding roster of artists working across painting, sculpture, and digital media, many of whom we’ve presented at the Dallas Art Fair. Prior to being in Tribeca, the gallery was on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and Brooklyn before that. Each location has had a slightly different feel, but I like to think that the programming and sensibility have stayed much the same. We also participate in a number of art fairs
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each year and have been presenting at Dallas Art Fair since 2020. AG: I believe most of the artists you represent are in their 30s. How do you discover artists early in their career and what are some of the things you look for when deciding which ones to work with? JB: You’re right, most of the artists we represent are in their 30s, although there’s a bit of a range. We are a young gallery, but I have worked with several of our artists for over five years now. I am in my 30s, and I think those early artist relationships developed at a time when I was seeking out what young artists were up to, and many of those connections came from my existing community of emerging artists. I studied art history and fine art in the city, which helped cultivate my understanding of the arts scene in New York. It’s also where I first met a lot of artists. I think by sheer virtue of going to school with emerging artists, and even having some as my professors, I inevitably fell into that crowd. In that sense, it wasn’t intentional to show younger artists, but more organic. It’s a privilege to be in New York City where there are so many artists and galleries, but recently I’ve been discovering more artists in a digital space, where I can be introduced to artists practicing all over the world. Deciding who to work with is one of the most frequent questions I get asked and hardest to answer. As I mentioned, most of my early relationships with artists started organically––I’d be