White Columns is sad to announce the passing of the artist Jeffrey Lew (b. 1946 in New York, NY, d. 2022 in Hollywood City, FL.) Lew was a co-founder of the pioneering alternative art space 112 Greene Street/112 Workshop which, in 1980, was renamed as White Columns.
In 1969 Lew purchased 112 Greene Street, New York, a six-story former rag salvaging factory, with the artist Rachel Wood. In 1970 Lew, along with fellow artists including Gordon Matta-Clark and Alan Saret, began to use the ground floor and basement of the building as exhibition space. Lew was involved with 112 Greene Street/112 Workshop during its formative years and helped organize innumerable exhibitions and performances there. Lew also presented his own work in both solo exhibitions and numerous group shows at 112 Greene Street/112 Workshop.
After moving away from the organization in the mid-1970s, Lew continued to show his own work, including a solo exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery in 1981. He would eventually relocate to Miami, FL, where he continued to work throughout the rest of his life. Jeffrey Lew and 112 Greene Street/112 Workshop played a critical role in shaping New York’s downtown arts community, in turn acting as a catalyst for the wider alternative art space movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In a 1978 interview about the early years of 112 Greene Street/112 Workshop Lew said: “None of the doors in 112 were ever locked. It was the most open, if not the only, socialist art system in New York at that time.”
To learn more about Jeffrey Lew and the history of 112 Greene Street/112 Workshop and White Columns please visit our archive.
|
|
