Coraggio News
December 1, 2016 Coraggio in Holiday Show
Coraggio works will be featured in Wendigo Productions’ 4th Annual Holiday Show at Art on A Gallery, December 8th–December 29th.
The opening reception will take place on Thursday, December 8th from 8 to 10PM.
October 4, 2015 Graffiti vs Street Art: A History
Selected works of Coraggio’s will be featured in the exhibit “Graffiti vs Street Art: A History” at Bishop Art Gallery in Brooklyn.
The curators’ ambition for the show is to bring graffiti artists and street artists together to “set the record straight on their history and significance in the art world.”
The show opens October 17th and runs through November 14th.
Click here to view or download the press release (PDF).
Click here to visit the exhibit's page on the Bishop Gallery website.
September 20, 2015 Coraggio featured in duo show in upstate NY
A two-person show featuring the work of Linus Coraggio and Chris Glembotzky will open on September 26th, 2015 at All Buenos Gallery, 28 Eastern Parkway in Arlington (Poughkeepsie), New York. The opening gala will take place from 10 am to 10 pm, and the exhibit will run at the gallery until January 1st, 2016. This show marks Coraggio’s third duo show since 1985.
Christopher Glembotzky’s work is currently large- and medium-sized digital prints of collage-like still lifes that evoke a Joseph-Cornel-meets-Tim-Burton aesthetic.
Linus Coraggio sculpts by cutting, bending and welding found metal into abstract or representational sculptures, mobiles and furniture. His work fuses the canon of great 20th-century American abstract sculptors with his own punk-rock and recycling style.
Both artists attended SUNY Purchase and cut their teeth professionally in the NYC/East Village art scene of the 1980s and ’90s.
For further information contact (347) 355-1988
May 11, 2015 Coraggio Opening at Elena Ab Gallery, Friday 05/15/15
Elena Ab Gallery at 185 Church Street in Tribeca presents a retrospective show spanning three decades of Linus Coraggio’s abstract and representational sculpture. Coraggio, a New York City native, is one of the pioneers of the early 1980s downtown street art movement; the magazine Art In America has credited him with inventing a genre of street art called “3-D Graffiti.”
Coraggio has exhibited both in the US and abroad, including projects in Japan, Scandinavia, Austria and a 2016 commission in France.
He founded the erstwhile art space/performance venue Gas Station (also known as Space 2B for its location at Ave. B & E 2nd St.), and is a co-founder of the “Rivington School” art movement—both seminal downtown epicenters of art activity and sprawling sculptural installation in the 1980s and 1990s.
The show includes paintings, woodcut prints and sculptural furniture.
It opens at 6:00 PM on Friday, May 15, 2015 (opening gala ’til 9:00 PM) and runs through June 30, 2015.
The gallery hours are Mondays: 1:00–4:00 pm; Tuesdays–Sundays: 12 noon–8:00 pm; and by appointment: (917) 691-5647.
December 12, 2014 Coraggio Invited to France
Linus Coraggio has been invited by the French Ministry of Culture to do a residency in the coastal town of Le Barcares, France—showing existing works and creating public art for the town during his stay.
In conjunction with the municipal engagement, there will also be an exhibition of Coraggio’s works at a private gallery, Maison des Arts (although the names are coincidentally similar, there is no connection with the NYC gallery that features Coraggio’s work, La Maison d’Art).
Coraggio will be in France from April 5th to May 15th, 2015; the Maison des Arts exhibit dates are TBD, but it will start sometime before the artist's arrival and continue for some time after his departure.
What’s more, the show could travel to Paris and Barcelona as well (nothing final on that yet).
To keep the focus on these happenings abroad, the planners have asked us to refrain from selling Coraggio’s art online until the Le Barcares exhibit is over in late spring.
We are honoring that request: while the site itself will remain active, no online sales will take place via the site starting after Christmas and continuing through, potentially, June.
Feel free to contact us if you have questions.
October 15, 2014 Coraggio gets three NYC shows in October
October is a busy month for Linus Coraggio, with pieces on exhibit in three shows in New York City.
Click the images below for more info
October 14, 2014 New York Paris Dream
“New York Paris Dream” is an upcoming four-person show at the Elena Ab Gallery.
Opening this Friday, October 17, it features a young French painter and Coraggio as the only sculptor. Linus will have several new abstract sculptures in the show as well as a new outdoor exhibit in front of the gallery: a sculptural bench and chair. These two outdoor furniture pieces will be on 24-hour display at the gallery indefinitely.
October 14, 2014 The L.E.S. Scene: Then and Now
“The L.E.S. Scene: Then and Now”—which opens this Thursday and runs through the rest of the month—is a survey of artists that were active on the Lower East Side in the 80s, many of whom are still around, living and working in the area.
Coraggio’s “Forged Figurative Gear” candlestick will be exhibited—the only piece in the show to be displayed on a pedestal on the gallery floor, the rest being hung on the walls.
October 14, 2014 (S)HE IS STILL HER(E)
Downtown NYC curator Johnny V invited Coraggio to participate in this homage to Lady Jaye—a Lower East Side fixture for a good twenty years or so, who passed away in 2007. Johnny said they were looking for “socio-sexual content” (which is certainly the most fitting tribute to Lady Jaye), so Linus contributed a piece entitled “Pussy”—an assemblage wall relief he originally created for a group show at The Gershwin Hotel in 1990 called “Sex, Death and Religion” (a reaction to the sort of second wave of Jesse Helms/Nancy Reagan-driven anti-sex and anti-art hysteria).
The opening night festivities are already over, but the artworks will remain up for about a month.
September 9, 2014 Coraggio in Harlem
About 5 blocks from where Coraggio attended Music and Art High School in the late 1970s is the La Maison d’Art Gallery at 259 W 132nd Street. Through his exhibiting at a pop-up gallery, Coraggio’s work was acquired by La Maison; that led to commissions, a solo show there last fall, and a labor of love: spending much of 2013 turning the gallery’s backyard into a beautiful showplace sculpture garden.
The official inauguration of the garden was held at La Maison in November of 2013, but we have just now discovered an album of photos of the inaugural gala that La Maison had posted on Facebook shortly after the event! There are many good photos of Coraggio's pieces—not only of the 22 sculptures and furniture pieces that permanently decorate the garden but also many of the Coraggio works on display inside the gallery (including sculptures, paintings and a complete set of woodcut prints). Among the photo album's highlights are images of the huge and wild Coraggio wall mosaic that took him 8 months to complete, now adorning one of the garden walls. You can also see two Coraggio furniture pieces visible from the street out in front of the brownstone gallery—do sit in them if you stop by!
Reflecting with some surprise on the relationship he now enjoys with the gallery and that area of New York City, Coraggio commented, “When I was going to high school in Harlem, I never thought I would have anything ever to do with the [then] shell-shocked neighborhood, let alone have any chance to show art there.”
The garden is open to the public daily from 1:00–6:00 pm.
About 5 blocks from where Coraggio attended Music and Art High School in the late 1970s is the La Maison d’Art Gallery at 259 W 132nd Street. Through his exhibiting at a pop-up gallery, Coraggio’s work was acquired by La Maison; that led to commissions, a solo show there last fall, and a labor of love: spending much of 2013 turning the gallery’s backyard into a beautiful showplace sculpture garden.
The official inauguration of the garden was held at La Maison in November of 2013, but we have just now discovered an album of photos of the inaugural gala that La Maison had posted on Facebook shortly after the event! There are many good photos of Coraggio's pieces—not only of the 22 sculptures and furniture pieces that permanently decorate the garden but also many of the Coraggio works on display inside the gallery (including sculptures, paintings and a complete set of woodcut prints). Among the photo album's highlights are images of the huge and wild Coraggio wall mosaic that took him 8 months to complete, now adorning one of the garden walls. You can also see two Coraggio furniture pieces visible from the street out in front of the brownstone gallery—do sit in them if you stop by!
Reflecting with some surprise on the relationship he now enjoys with the gallery and that area of New York City, Coraggio commented, “When I was going to high school in Harlem, I never thought I would have anything ever to do with the [then] shell-shocked neighborhood, let alone have any chance to show art there.”
The garden is open to the public daily from 1:00–6:00 pm.
August 26, 2014 Monty Cantsin Stops By After Making Headlines at The Whitney to Discuss Rivington School Docu-Book
The long-awaited book documenting the history and impact of The Rivington School is finally on its way to publication after 15 years of starts and stalls. As some of you already know, Linus Coraggio spearheaded the creation of a massive morass of a welded steel installation at the corner of Rivington and Chrystie streets on NYC's Lower East Side in the mid-1980s. Known simply as The Sculpture Garden, it attracted hundreds of other artists during its 7-year run, birthing a movement that came to be known as The Rivington School.
The site and the movement garnered much media attention during the peak of the over-hyped East Village art scene against which the Rivington School stood in contrast as a bold, grimy bastion of true Bohemia gone wild.
On August 21st, 2014, artist Monty Cantsin—fresh from his arrest and brief stay at Bellevue after a guerrilla performance piece at the Whitney museum the day before wherein he painted some Rivington School graffiti inside the Jeff Koons show using his own blood (click here for more on that)—came by Coraggio’s studio to examine some photos for possible inclusion in the book. The two also discussed topics that Coraggio will include in a lengthy “self-interview” planned for the book. Among those topics are how The Sculpture Garden got started, what was its driving aesthetic, how women interfaced with the macho atmosphere, and a short bit about the “son of Rivington,” a.k.a. Linus Coraggio's Gas Station/Space 2B.
The book is due out in May of 2015 and promises to be an action-packed 300 pages—all except the cover, which will be in dazzling black-and-white.
August 23, 2014 La Maison d'Art makes Coraggio a “Permanent Artist”
Works by Linus Coraggio have been put on permanent display at La Maison D’Art gallery in Harlem at 259 W 132nd St.
The gallery boasts a full backyard sculpture garden featuring 22 of Coraggio's outdoor works.
The garden itself was designed by Coraggio “from the dirt up” with an eye toward striking a lovely balance between sculpture display space, sculptural seating, and plantings.
In the garden there is also a huge and intricate wall mosaic by Coraggio which took him a year to finish, and his most recent addition to the gallery is a sculptural window gate visible from the street.
Hours are noon to 6pm daily or by appointment: (917) 533-4605.