ADAM LINDEMANN OPENS GALLERY

It’s been in the rumor mill for a while, and now the famously cocky collector and New York Observer columnist Adam Lindemann has announced that he’s opening his own gallery, called Venus Over Manhattan, at 980 Madison Avenue. The location is the same building that houses Gagosian Gallery, and just down the avenue from the Luxembourg and Dayan, the townhouse dealership co-owned by his wife, Amalia Dayan.

You may draw your own conclusions about the fact that the debut exhibition, co-curated by Lindemann and the new staff, is inspired by the story of an aristocratic, naval-gazing esthete. The exhibition takes its title from À rebours, or “against nature,” the celebrated 1884 cult novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans, which tells the story of a wealthy Frenchman who trades Paris society for rural isolation, in which collecting art and exotic objects become his only pleasures.

The show, May 10-June 30, 2012, plays on this “against the grain” theme with more than 50 artworks and artifacts, from the 18th century into the present. It includes a work by Gustave Moreau, the painter usually associated with Huysmans, as well as works by Bernard Buffet, William Nelson Copley, Jeff Koons, Glenn Brown, Salvador Dali, Walter Dahn, David Hammons, Henry Fuseli, Odilon Redon, Felicien Rops, Lucas Samaras, Jeni Spota, Franz von Stuck, Andra Ursuta and Gavin Kenyon. There’s even a feather cape from an ancient Hawaiian chieftain.

“À rebours” has yet to make use of Lindemann’s blue-chip contemporary collection, but presumably we’ll be seeing more of that in the future.

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