Is Laurel Nakadate a born-again virgin? She’ll play one at the inaugural exhibition of Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni’s mini-gallery, “Family Business.” The show, curated by Marilyn Minter and opening February 16, will feature Mike Rottenberg, Kate Gilmore, and Patty Chang, among others.
“Family Business,” as Jerry Saltz recently explained in New York Magazine, is Cattelan’s first venture “post-retirement.” The tiny space, which shares a home with Anna Kustera Gallery on 21st Street in Chelsea, is described as the “big brother” of the Wrong Gallery, a similarly miniscule space Cattelan, Gioni, and curator Ali Subotnick ran in New York from 2002 to 2005. Like the Wrong Gallery, “Family Business” will be a non-profit space and no works will be for sale.
Minter’s exhibition, titled “The Virgins Show,” cheekily professes to feature artists that have never been shown before. “Presumably they are in fact still virgins,” reads the press release, which also describes Marilyn Minter as a “longtime virgin.” The artist list distinguishes between “virgins” and “born-again virgins” (Chang, Gilmore, Nakadate, and Rottenberg fall into the latter category). Several of the names on the “virgins” list, such as Eric Mistretta and Andrew Brischler, are students at the School of the Visual Arts, where Minter is a professor. See the full list, according to the release, below.
Virgins:
Andrew Brischler
Eric Mistretta
David Mramor
Rebecca Ward
and more
Born Again Virgins:
Patty Chang
Kate Gilmore
Laurel Nakadate
Wangechi Mutu
Mika Rottenberg
Aida Ruilova
— Julia Halperin