With galleries seeking alternatives to the pulverizing year-round mill of the fair cycle, the Mexico City-based dealer Brett Schultz may have come up with a viable option of going global without going broke. Ruberta, a new collaborative exhibition space in Glendale, California, brings five Latin American galleries to Los Angeles for a year-long residence. Coinciding with Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the project launches in September with a group exhibition involving all the participating galleries, after which each venue will host its own two-month show.
The cooperative includes some of the most progressive galleries in the region: Galería Agustina Ferreyra (San Juan), Lodos (Mexico City), Proyectos Ultravioleta (Guatemala City), Carne (Bogotá), and Schultz’s own new project BWSMX, formerly Yautepec (Mexico City).
At a modest cost of $2,500—the rent divided between the five galleries—each space effectively gets a four-month presence in Los Angeles, as opposed to four days at an art fair. Should the West Coast experiment prove gainful, Schultz does not rule out the possibility of expanding to New York. At a time when cooperation often seems the only way to survive, it might not be long until we see the Ruberta model popping up in other art capitals.