From the standpoint of Chicago’s complex world of real estate zoning and licensure, many artist-run galleries can fall into a legal gray area. Often ventures more invested in taste-making than money-making, dozens of apartment galleries exist in limbo, somewhere between public and private use, running their spaces on the QT — lest they wind up like 65GRAND.Located on the third floor of a mixed-use building at 1378 W. Grand Ave., 65GRAND existed under the radar for five years as something of a full-time hobby for proprietor Bill Gross, all but taking over his tiny one-bedroom apartment. He’d converted his kitchen and living spaces years ago, giving them over to eclectic installations and extended showcases of work by national and international artists. Fifty-five and graying, Gross is the atypical apartment gallerist: He maintains a day job as a preparator with the Art Institute’s department of European Decorative Arts and is well out of grad school. Still, like his younger colleagues in this niche of the local art scene, he’s never had designs on running his venue as a business.
But last spring, two representatives from the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Licensing issued Gross a cease-and-desist order with 30 days to comply. The charge? Operating a business without the appropriate license. The solution? Obtain said license.
For Gross and dozens of others who host non-traditional galleries — some of them contained to single rooms or even medicine cabinets — in buildings that may or may not be zoned accordingly, city legislature doesn’t fully account for a “business” that isn’t making a profit.
“I kind of looked at the city’s Web site, and I couldn’t figure it out,” Gross said last spring. “I mean, where do I fit in?”
In an “If you can’t beat ’em …” move last summer, Gross bid adieu to the third floor walk-up whose kitchen had hosted dozens of artists over the course of five years (he’d lived there for 16), moved his art collection 200 feet across the street to a commercially-zoned former video store, and bought a $250 business license that’s good for two years. Gross, his fiancé and a heavyset white ottoman of a cat found an apartment nearby. 65GRAND reopened in September with a show by Brian Kapernekas, held over from last summer’s cease-and-desist phase, and it has been business as usual — legally, finally — ever since.
“I was really pleased to find something in the neighborhood,” Gross said last week of his new digs. “(And) being on the ground floor has its advantages.”
For the first time in its half-decade history, 65GRAND is visible to its neighbors, many of whom were never aware of the old space. Gross estimates that he draws about a dozen visitors on an average weekend (hours are Friday and Saturday afternoons), many of whom have popped in out of curiosity, “dipping their toes into the art world for the first time,” he said. “I enjoy walking them through (that experience).”
The prior space, frequented almost exclusively by visitors with direct ties to the art community, was well known as a safe haven for experimentation. The last exhibition to take place there, a show called “Light: Snacks” by Boston-based artist David Ingenthron, featured an installation dubbed “Object Permanence” comprised of more than 100 moving boxes covered with pale primer and stacked neatly into six-foot-tall grids.
At that time, in receipt of the cease-and-desist papers and knowing he’d need to relocate to a standard commercial space, Gross worried aloud about the repercussions.
“If I’m in a space where I have more overhead, can I continue to present shows in the manner that I do?” he said at the time. “I mean, no one’s going to buy a stack of moving boxes. … This is what the artist wants to do. The apartment — this space, and other spaces — there are other agendas but a lot of it is artist-centric.”
Now, the artists — and by association, the art, the gallery, and Gross — are more exposed to public perception.
“It’s different running a space at street level,” Gross said last week. “In the old space, people knew what to expect. Now I get more casual visitors. My initial thought was to run the exact same model as the old space, but this has a different feel.”
Gross is still somewhat nostalgic for his old digs.
“There is something about it I do miss,” he said. “There was a history there that I now look back on fondly. I learned how to run a gallery there.”
Jasmine Justice, “You’ll Love Them All For Giving You the Swellest Time You’ve Ever Had!” runs through Saturday at 65GRAND, 1369 W. Grand Ave., 312-719-4325; 65grand.com. Philip von Zweck’s exhibition of mixed-media abstract paintings opens July 15.
Twitter @laurenviera
