In a Legacy Obsessed Cultural Landscape, a New Experimental Art Space Is Embracing Ephemerality

Earlier this month, a 3,000-square-foot experimental arts space quietly opened in Lower Manhattan, its ethos guided by an intriguing question: what if not just exhibitions, but institutions were temporary? times, on Lafayette Street, arrives at a moment when the middle of the art ecosystem is thinning out, with optimism increasingly concentrated at the top and bottom ends of the market and institutions favoring novelty and legacy over experimentation. In that widening gap between buzz and critical consecration, times’s founders—Summer Guthery, former director of Canal Projects and co-founder of JOAN, and curator, collector and philanthropist Francesca Sonara—saw a unique opportunity to support artists who, despite widespread institutional inertia, are still taking risks.

Legacy seeking, Guthery and Sonara believe, is antithetical to experimentation, which is part of why times has a finite lifespan of just three years. “Knowing that the organization itself is temporary can shift the focus… toward the urgency of the present moment,” she said. Freed from the long tail of institutional branding, artists can prioritize immediacy and focus on responding to social, political, ecological and democratic concerns.

Programming opened on February 12 with Jana Jacuka’s HA, a 50-minute solo performance that explores laughter as a survival mechanism in situations where boundaries are crossed through intense, sometimes violent-feeling vocalizations and unnerving physical choreography. It was followed on February 21 by the opening of Nina Beier’s first New York solo exhibition in seven years, a large-scale installation of off-brand Cornetto-style ice cream cones that deflate rather than melt, slowly collapsing under the weight of their own artificiality but never disappearing.

Upcoming projects will feature the work of Nadia Belerique, Asad Raza, Liv Schulman and Gernot Wieland. Other planned programs include a performance of Bob Kil’s Coo Coo, a screening of Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff’s THEATER and a book launch for Travis Diehl’s new book-length essay, A Snake Whistles, on March 14.

We caught up with Guthery and Sonara to learn more about the specifics of the project and what it means to support artists who need time and space to think more than they need a five-year plan.

The obvious first question is: why opt in to obsolescence? Is there something that an endpoint allows you to do—curatorially, ethically or otherwise—that a permanent project doesn’t?

times: We think and talk a lot about what our community needs or what is lacking, and the obvious answer is space, but time is also an increasingly scarce resource for all of us. What do we have time to make, see, experience and think about? How do we create something that is not only sharing space, but sharing time? Both in terms of literally sharing time with each other to discuss ideas and concepts, but also leaving some time for others—other curators, artists, producers? How do we think about time more realistically, as a diminishing resource that needs to be used conservatively?

Do you envision artists working differently when they know the organization they’re aligning with is temporary?

Francesca Sonara: Only insofar as the acceptance of ephemerality liberates them. I also think a lot about Fisher’s theory of capitalist realism: the future is dead. Everything we make lives forever on the internet, regardless of the institution’s lifespan. Make something now, that affects us now. Let the internet do the heavy lifting of legacy-making, that’s what it’s best at.

Summer Guthery: I also believe that the temporary nature will actually allow artists more freedom. Knowing that the organization itself is temporary can shift the focus away from legacy-building or institutional permanence and toward the urgency of the present moment. It can create space for artists to take risks, try things that might not fit neatly into a longer institutional program, or pursue ideas that are experimental, fragile or time-bound.

Can you explain your commitment to ‘deprofessionalization’?

times: We want to be clear: deprofessionalization does not equate to a laissez-faire attitude toward ethical practice. We are not expecting artists to go way out on a limb for us based on a casual conversation. We have enough infrastructure in place to ensure that everyone understands the expectations and shared goals. When we say deprofessionalization, we are talking more about pushing back against the increasing corporatization of the arts, where managerial language, metrics and institutional habits borrowed from other industries begin to dictate how art is produced and experienced. Those systems often prioritize scale, branding and efficiency over experimentation, care and responsiveness.

Both of you come from contexts invested in non-commercial experimentation. What, specifically, felt insufficient in existing models that made starting times feel necessary now?

times: We do not think of this work as filling a void; instead, we are humbly joining a long history of small nonprofit and artist-run organizations that focus on artistic practices that are most in need—experimental and ephemeral practices. We think of ourselves as additive to a rich, but still very fragile ecosystem of organizations—both commercial and noncommercial. Our existence is meant to be a reminder, not a solution.

What throughline do you see guiding the program, and how do the first shows establish times’s stakes from the outset?

times: The narrative arc of the first year has multiple entry points, but one is definitely absurdity in response to chaos. Returning to this idea of “deprofessionalization,” we are giving ourselves the space to be funny, make mistakes, show the messiness of the big ideas the artists of our times are contending with. Our inaugural exhibition by Nina Beier, for instance, features an installation of hundreds of off-brand Cornetto-style ice cream cones that, due to unnatural ingredients, never fully melt—referencing our industrialized food systems. An appreciation for the absurd feels like a valid response to the moment.

times’s mission explicitly centers artists responding to social, political, ecological and democratic crises. What motivated that?

times: We talk a lot about the surrealists and Dadaists and the evergreen interest in that period. But what is it that makes us so eager to return to that period? It’s not just overturned urinals and melting clocks, it’s the moment those artists were responding to as a community of makers very much on the outside of the establishment. They had so much to contend with intellectually, politically, socially and geographically. It was the calamity of their present that made them so prolific.

What will success look like at the end of the organization’s lifespan? What impact would you like to see?

Francesca Sonara: I like to think of us as fuel for the engine, rather than the engine itself. We are keeping the wheel churning or keeping alive the possibility of making something small, eccentric and decidedly non-algorithmically optimized.

Summer Guthery: Yes, success for us would mean purposefully supporting artists and projects while staying true to our values. If, by the end, artists felt they were able to realize ideas that might not otherwise have found support, and if we helped keep space open for experimentation and risk at a time when that space feels increasingly scarce, that would feel like a real accomplishment.

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