Private collections on display at new gallery
Founders want Griffin Art Projects to be a place where everyone can view works normally unavailable to the public
A new public art gallery is opening today in North Vancouver dedicated to showing the work of private collectors.
It’s called Griffin Art Projects and is an initiative of Brigitte and Henning Freybe, two of Metro Vancouver’s major art collectors. The opening exhibition features work from the couple’s private collection as well as the collection of Kathleen and Laing Brown. Both the Freybes and the Browns live on the North Shore and have been collecting art for more than 40 years.
Henning said they have a long history with the art world.
“It has given us amazing value personally — never financially,” he said. “To be able to give back to the community is the main part of the idea of opening the gallery.”
He said they felt it important to recognize the role played by private collectors in the local art community. They’re not usually acknowledged, he said, unless they lend a work to an institution such as Vancouver Art Gallery.
The Freybes started collecting in 1972. Their first work was Piaski III, by Frank Stella, where the U.S. artist added geometric planes to his paintings to give them a third dimension. Brigitte Freybe found it difficult to describe why she wanted to buy the Stella work.
“It’s a question you could ask me about every piece,” she said. “I can’t answer that. It’s instantly that I find fascination with something. I don’t want to say we collect art to live with it — which we do. I don’t know why a piece of art speaks to me. It does.”
Henning is the former chairman of Freybe Gourmet Foods. Two years ago, the Vancouverarea company was sold to Premium Brands.
Griffin Art Projects is located at 1174 Welch St. at Pemberton Avenue. The gallery is on the ground level of a two-storey former warehouse in an industrial area of North Vancouver. The gallery’s opening reception is today. Its regular hours are noon to 5 p.m. every Saturday or by appointment.
The opening exhibition features an international collection of works curated by Helga Pakasaar. It includes 100 Beggars, Plaza del Estudiante, Mexico City by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra. The work is a grid of photographs of beggars from the back — except for one — the artist paid to pose.
Five Words in Coloured Neon by Vancouver artist Ron Terada is the five levels of the U. S. Homeland Security warning system shown in neon.
One of Ron Martin’s Black Paintings is from a series of monochromes he painted from 1974 to 1981. In 1978, Martin’s Black Paintings were among the works that represented Canada at the Venice Biennale.
Brigitte said because she and her husband are an acquisition committee of two, there has to be unanimous agreement before they buy a work. Mostly, they agree. Sometimes they don’t.
“If one says no, it doesn’t happen,” she said.
The gallery is named Griffin Art Projects because of Henning’s connection with the city formerly known as Stettin, Germany, where he was born. (It’s now the Polish city of Szczecin.) The city’s coat of arms features a Griffin.
Idon’t know why a piece of art speak stome. It does.
BRIGITTE FREYBE
CO-FOUNDER, GRIFFIN ART PROJECTS