Meet Michael Nevin, Founder of Snowboarding Zine-turned-Art Gallery The Journal
What do a snowboarding zine circa the 1990s and a trendy Williamsburg art gallery have in common? It turns out, everything. In 1999, during his first year at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, Michael Nevin, a then-18-year-old denizen of the skateboard-snowboard community, began publishing a zine—à laxerox and staples—that would one day become a glossy, hard-bound barometer of art and culture. After graduating, Nevin moved to NYC with partner (and now wife) Julia Dippelhofer and their magazine, the journal, found its first real home in an entire building in the East Village. In a short matter of time, the space doubled as an art gallery, and today, the magazine and gallery are housed side-by-side in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—which is convenient for Nevin, who is both Editor-in-Chief of the magazine and director of the The Journal Gallery.
“The approach has always been to try new things and to keep the program exciting,” Nevin told Artsy. The publication reads like a who’s-who of artists and photographers (contributors include Dan Colen, William Eggleston, Miranda July, Richard Prince, Peter Sutherland) and none would argue that the gallery’s notoriously packed openings—Juergen Teller’s 2012 show for instance—are any different. As the gallery prepares for another big opening, painter Daniel Hesidence’s first solo exhibition in almost four years, we asked Nevin about an exhibition that’s even sooner: the gallery’s booth at NADA New York.
“We will be showing new work from four painters, Graham Collins, Kika Karadi, Jeff Zilm, and Peter Demos,” Nevin said. “Each of these artists will show an abstract work at NADA, but the process and conceptual aspects of their practice vary greatly.” He had the most to say about the contribution from Jeff Zilm, a painter from Dallas, Texas: “His works reference film in that they are the compression of an entire black-and-white movie into a single abstract painting,” he said. “His process involves stripping the emulsion of a film in its entirety, producing ‘paint’ from the emulsion, then using a compressor to apply the medium to canvas. There is a certain uneasiness embedded in these works and they seem to vibrate on the wall. We visited his studio a couple weeks ago and were blown away.”
The work will be on view at NADA New York from May 9th through 11th. We asked Nevin what a visitor to the fair might see/do to make the most of their time in New York City. His response? “Go to Brooklyn.”
Visit The Journal at NADA New York, Main, Booth 502, May 9th–11th.
