Los Angeles-based gallery Stroll Garden takes over the former Bouvier house and studio of Adolph Gottleib
by JANET MERCEL
Sculptures by Maddy Inez
For the rest of the summer, a storied East Hampton home will live as a group show from Stroll Garden. “Dream House”, the Los Angeles gallery’s second annual summer exhibition, invokes art imitating life, with nearly forty ceramic works from artists such as Ryan Flores, Analuisa Corrigan, and Lindsey Lou Howard.
Those who recognize the white-shuttered, shingle and shiplap house may know it as “Wildmoor”, the childhood summer home of Jacqueline Kennedy and Lee Radziwill, and later, the residence of Adolph Gottlieb. The abstract expressionist sculptor and painter purchased the property from the Bouviers in 1960, and transformed the former carriage house into his studio and exhibition space. Stroll Garden founders Claire Vinson and Philip Williams blur the lines of reality and fantasy with seemingly domestic, everyday objects in disorienting, nearly Surrealist placements throughout the property. “Staging an exhibition in a space with historical resonance, particularly given it was formerly an artist’s studio, makes any show here animated, at least in part, by that history,” says Williams.
Lindsey Lou Howard’s Plant Based
On a quiet street, just a few houses down from Grey Gardens, where ‘Little Edie’ Beale, Jackie’s first cousin, lived, the house is close enough to the Atlantic to hear the surf. People in damp bathing suits and flip-flops stroll past on their way back from the beach. Viewing Lindsey Lou Howard’s Plant Based by the pool, or Jaye Kim’s oversize Service #1 on the coffee table, it is not immediately clear if you’ve wandered into an exhibition or are an accidental guest at a family gathering. It is, in fact, a little of both. “Last year, we noticed people really responded to the lived-in aspect of the space. This year we wanted to lean into that and have fun with the idea of being part of a home,” says Williams, whose family bought and restored the property in 2022. “We chose to incorporate the existing ping pong table, as well as our four year old niece’s pool toys.”
Pieces by Aimee Byrne, Ryan Flores and Lindsey Lou Howard
The tableau recalls the unplaceable creepiness of Emma Cline’s novel The Guest, last summer’s favorite beach-read about a sex worker navigating a precarious weekend of socializing-slash-surviving on Long Island. Unexpected, playful, but somehow simmering with tension, the diverse group of sculptors toy with the disconnect between leisure and unease. Aimee Byrne’s Teddy flops poetically on an upstairs loft bed. The artist’s Party Paddles and Yes Smoking ashtray sculpture sit downstairs, looking freshly abandoned. The overall effect is an uncanny, even spooky, hyper-realism, in this place where so much fabled and creative history has already unfolded. “The exhibition as a whole could have been conjured from a late-summer dream,” Vinson says. “It visually represents that elusive feeling– both its pleasures and its disconnection from daily realities. The works blend humorous, grotesque, uncanny, and abstract elements, creating a tapestry of dreamlike, sensory-rich experiences.”
A piece by Aimee Byrne’s Yes Smoking
Dream House August 11–September 2, 2024
Exhibition Hours:
Thursday–Sunday by appointment
