A couple of years ago I was asked to critique the students over at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, something I often get asked to do and enjoy very much, particularly since so many of our most succesful and talented artists graduated from there. One of the students who caught my eye that day was Travis Egedy, I was familiar with his work and had included a painting of his (titled..."Football is like so gay") in our group exhibition of emerging artists "The Young Guns" for our 5th anniversary show. He was doing a lot of works on paper, kind of honing a style that was similar to his paintings but much more immediate and with a keen sensibility towards the current wave of hipster art and anything-goes approach. The works felt fresh and vibrant to me, and this one in particular resonated deeply. Travis related how he was just thinking about the NY art scene and how you here so much about having to be there and that the trend is to grind through the young artists, turn and burn them, etc....and that he just felt like it was all so shitty from the perspective of being in art school in Denver. I of course feel more or less the same way about running a contemporary gallery in Denver, constantly having to grapple with how to make artists seem relevant who haven't been through the NYC grind. And so "Fuck NY" really resonates with me and is a piece I adore. We now have a bunch of Travis' works on paper in our inventory at Plus, there are quite a few gems but as FNY says, you have to be huge somewhere else to get people around here to pay money for them.
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