At Passerby, last call isn’t just for drinks anymore. This art season will be the last for GBE@Passerby, an offshoot of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise that has called the soon-to-expire Passerby bar its home. Exact closing date? Sometime in June. Schedule for this farewell run? “Googols of artists, shit-tons of –plex,” according to their press release. GBE’s attitude toward the whole thing? A sort of eh-maybe-it’s-for-the-best manifesto analyzing the current state of art in New York and (still) challenging it with a few final, curatorial convention-defying blows.
So what’s for sure? They’ve established a website where they’ll be listing upcoming events, some with lots of notice and others we’ll call “in the moment.” Exhibitions will be shorter in duration than in the past, and they’ll incorporate live performance and screenings. Thus far the schedule features the Wu-Tang Clan and a stoop (like, that thing in front of your door).
Down on Greenwich Street, the main GBE space will remain open beyond Passerby’s last days. And as for a purpose to this last hurrah (instead of a quiet winding-down), in the words of Darren Bader on behalf of New York Is Dead (the name of this whole operation), it’s all an “attempt to revivify something we sense missing.” But there’s no plan to open a new second space.








