HAIRandNAILS Is the Minneapolis Gallery for Artists, by Artists
Portrait of Kristin Van Loon and Ryan Fontaine. Photo by Emma Beatrez. Courtesy of HAIRandNAILS.
From their roots in DIY art spaces, Ryan Fontaine and Kristin Van Loon, the duo behind HAIRandNAILS, champion an artist-first ethos in their gallery. Together, they melded their backgrounds—Fontaine’s in punk rock and experimental music, and Van Loon’s in choreography and performance—into an inclusive gallery experience. In a growing Minneapolis art scene, HAIRandNAILS has developed into a vital addition to its community.
Fontaine and Van Loon first crossed paths in 2013, when Fontaine attended Van Loon’s performance at the Walker Art Center. At that time, Fontaine was hosting pop-up galleries across the city, such as The Temporary Autonomous Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014. This predated his later venture, Oval Hedley, a semi-permanent gallery in Portland, Oregon, which he ran with his brother.
Exterior view of HAIRandNAILS. Courtesy of HAIRandNAILS.
Over the years, this partnership between Fontaine and Van Loon blossomed into a shared vision that took a concrete shape with the purchase of a property in south Minneapolis. Comprising a commercial storefront and residential space, the gallery offered an ideal setting as a base for their artist community. This step marked the beginning of HAIRandNAILS seven years ago, initially as an artist-run enterprise that evolved into a commercial space, driven by their curiosity about how more traditional gallery businesses operated. Still, the intention to create a space for their community remained central.
“We just wanted a place to show our own work and our friends’ work,” Fontaine said. “[HAIRandNAILS] started very much as an artist-run space, but we found that we were really curious how a more traditional gallery space operated.…We approach it from the perspective of an artist and probably always will.”
Inspired to cultivate a local and communal artist hub, HAIRandNAILS primarily focuses its scope within the Midwest, with 10 out of the gallery’s 14 represented artists scattered across Minneapolis and the Rust Belt. This regional concentration reflects the gallery’s commitment to nurturing local talent. In many ways, Fontaine and Van Loon are using the traditional commercial gallery business model to uplift their artistic communities, bringing local artists to fairs and selling their works via online platforms.
Installation view of “Chimera” at HAIRandNAILS, 2023. Courtesy of HAIRandNAILS.
The gallery consistently engages local artists in dialogue with one another. “Chimera,” on view from November 18th through December 31st, features new works from Minneapolis-based painters Emma Beatrez, Rachel Collier, and Julia Garcia, and Los Angeles–based Christina Ballantyne. This grouping of four artists on the gallery’s roster—who have had or will present solo exhibitions there—bolsters artistic conversation and champions the voices of emerging talent.
“I love how HAIRandNAILS is driven by human relationships,” Van Loon said. “As artists ourselves, we can support the artists we present with a knowledge base from our own practices. The fact that we both come from performing arts backgrounds brings a special flavor to our project. Some of my favorite shows have been ones that merge artistic disciplines and when visual artists and time-based artists collaborate.”
Minneapolis, with renowned institutions like the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Weisman Art Museum, has always been a cultural hotspot. Yet HAIRandNAILS adds an unconventional destination for artists to share their work, bridging the gap between these major institutions and other DIY or artist-run spaces that are spread across the city.
Installation view of “Chimera” at HAIRandNAILS, 2023. Courtesy of HAIRandNAILS.
Like many Midwestern cities, Minneapolis is brimming with talented artists, and Fontaine and Van Loon intend to fuel the local art scene while providing a pathway for artists to enter the international conversation.
“There’s a lot of artists, small artist-run spaces, and unconventional locations that are showing incredible work; incredible curation in living rooms, garages, studio spaces,” Fontaine said. “We’re hoping that a lot of these artist-run spaces will [grow into] a bigger footprint.”
On the side, Fontaine and Van Loon maintain their personal art practices. Fontaine recently teased a large-scale resin installation at the Rochester Art Center, where, later in the year, Van Loon, as part of her dance duo HIJACK, will participate in another installation.
Despite these personal endeavors, they continue to ambitiously expand the gallery’s art fair footprint, from Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles to NADA in Miami. Most of the gallery’s major exhibitions for 2024 are already planned. The founders both attribute their motivation to balance the responsibilities of a commercial gallery with their own artistic pursuits to their deep-rooted passion for the artists on their roster.
In the end, HAIRandNAILS is at the forefront of an artistic stronghold in the Midwest. “Where our gallery is coming from is very much an advocacy for artists,” Fontaine said. “We’re very close with the artists; in fact, we feel more like artistic peers in some ways because we’re both still active artists.”
