Sperone Westwater

Profile

Founded in the �70s in SoHo, this gallery originally aimed to introduce European artists to the scene while promoting a small group of Americans. Seminal painter Gerhard Richter was given his first stateside show here in 1978, helping to bring Arte Povera to SoHo. Now located on the Lower East Side on a stretch of the Bowery below Houston, this gallery can boast that Bruce Nauman, the cowboy granddaddy of American conceptual art and video, likes to send them work when he’s not hiding out on his ranch in New Mexico (his wife, painter Susan Rothenberg, also shows with Sperone). The very delicate works of sometime-"shaman" sculptor Richard Tuttle can also be found here, fine-tuned by his small, deliberate manipulations of wire, squares of plywood, and thinly applied watercolor. As for younger artists, there’s irreverent "It-boy" Tom Sachs, who comments on consumer culture with sometimes questionable taste�as with his infamous "Prada Death Camp." And Gothic Belgian sculptor Wim Delvoye�whose "shit machine" was a science-project feat, if not very pleasant for visitors�has installed intricate stained-glass windows and x-ray images in the gallery. — Alex Mar