Horton Gallery

History

In September of 2012 Horton Gallery opened a new 2200 square-foot gallery at 55-59 Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side of New York City. Originally the Miles & Co. Croton Brewery between 1823-1909, the building also housed an early residence and recording studio for the Beastie Boys and later became the decade-long home to CANADA gallery.

Horton Gallery was founded by C. Sean Horton in 2010 and occupied the parlor floor of a federal-style house on West 22nd Street in Chelsea for two years. During these years the gallery also operated a project space in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, Germany.

Between 2006-2010, Horton operated SUNDAY L.E.S. in a small storefront on Eldridge Street. The gallery quickly became an integral part of the emerging group of galleries on the Lower East Side offering the first New York solo shows to an intergenerational mix of artists like Leidy Churchman, Keltie Ferris, and Kirk Hayes alongside legendary outsiders like Joel Gibb (of The Hidden Cameras), G.B. Jones, and Royal Robertson. Represented artist Peter Gallo was also enlisted to curate a posthumous survey of Gayleen Aiken, who is often referred to as “the Grandma Moses of Vermont.”

The gallery, its artists, and highly idiosyncratic program have since received critical acclaim in Artforum, Flash Art, Frieze, Modern Painters, Art in America, Time Out New York, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Sun, The Village Voice, and The New York Times, among others. (more…)

Early Press

Sean Horton, who opened a tiny storefront gallery called SUNDAY on the Lower East Side three years ago, has extended his initial short-term rental of the parlor floor of the federal-style house on West 22nd Street...Mr. Horton, whose taste runs to unknown artists who make quirky paintings...said Chelsea “has a need for young art dealers and young artists.” - Smith, Roberta. "The Mood of the Market, as Measured in the Galleries." New York Times. September 3, 2009.

Leidy Churchman’s sly, tenderly wrought paintings both sort out and blur issues of gender and sexual orientation with a quasi-naïve, sometimes folkish style. His use of oil on beautifully grained wood panels that are often left partly bare enhances the glow of wholesome normalcy...Taut and deliberate, Mr. Churchman’s paintings brim with emotion and quietly, but surely, form a remarkable debut. - Smith, Roberta. "Art in Review." The New York Times. July 17, 2009.

My first stop was Sunday, a small gallery that shows a lot of good, young painters, including Lauren Luloff, whose canvases encrusted with rumpled bedsheets offer smart reconsiderations of Rauschenberg's combines. - Martha Schwendener. "Canvasing the Neighborhood." April 29, 2009.

Kirk Hayes is a find. A self-taught painter who works as a groundskeeper at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Tex. Mr. Hayes, 50, creates witty and amazingly effective trompe l’oeil paintings. - Johnson, Ken. "Art in Review." The New York Times. November 8, 2008.

SUNDAY, established in October 2006 by Sean Horton in a modest storefront space on Eldridge near Houston Street, the district's approximate northern boundary. Horton is one of numerous dealers who have adopted the term "inter-generational" to describe their programs. SUNDAY's recent show of small-scaled, materially and narratively layered work by Peter Gallo defied a quick scan. - Maine, Stephen. “Mapping New Territory.” Art In America. March 2008.

On the subject of holiness and accessibility, Texas-born independent curator Clayton Sean Horton also had a splendid notion: starting a New York gallery that would be open on Sundays, called SUNDAY. Located in a residential building, SUNDAY defines itself as humble and domestic, providing an "intimate, casual environment for viewing art." - Papernik, Erica. “New York’s LES.” Flash Art. March 2008.

Just when it seemed like Manhattan real-estate prices had made it impossible for art galleries to cluster in another neighborhood, the Lower East Side has emerged as a real and non-annoying place for looking at art. There are only around 30 galleries, spread out, meaning you have to take a breather as you walk between shows. The neighborhood is mixed-up and interesting; the spaces are small and intimate and call to mind the DIY early East Village. Galleries aren't better because they're here or worse because they're in Chelsea - and in a few years, the Lower East Side may be saturated. For now, however, it's lovely. - Saltz, Jerry. “The Year in Art – Best New Scene – L.E.S.” New York Magazine. December 2007.

I also saw gallerists and artists taking exactly the right kind of risks. First time NADA exhibitor SUNDAY immediately comes to mind, his booth filled with the layered material sculptures of Michael Jones McKean. It’s a ballsy move; objects don’t sell as easily as paintings, they are pricey to transport, and there’s no back up if the work doesn’t sell...McKean’s montage sculptures achieve a level of accomplishment in space activation and exhibition design I have yet to see matched at any art fair, including Basel. What’s more, the work itself is amongst the best I’ve seen, the negative and positive space creating complexity and surface to the work. The arrangements themselves would seem almost too perfectly placed, were it not for the use rich textiles, which demand deliberation of that sort. - Johnson, Paddy. “Risk Taking at NADA.” Art Fag City. December 2007.

Peter Gallo, who lives in rural Vermont and has an excellent show at SUNDAY. A collagist and draftsman of considerable invention, Mr. Gallo is also an art critic and historian, a psychiatric social worker and a wide-ranging reader and music lover, all of which comes through in intensely referential work that embraces Freud, Roland Barthes, Dusty Springfield, gay pornography and ornithology. Mr. Gallo’s art has an insider-outsider look that can, in other hands, turn precious and generic, but he makes it work. I lingered over each piece, and if I had to choose a favorite artist from my tour, he would certainly be on the shortlist. - Cotter, Holland. "An Upbeat Moment for a Downtrodden Area." The New York Times. December 1, 2007.

SUNDAY...exudes a spunky determination, using every square inch of its barely-bigger-than-a-bread-box space to showcase emerging figures; and in an LES context where art venues seem embedded in the comings and goings of ordinary life. - Singer, Debra. “On the Ground: New York.” Artforum. December 2007.

SUNDAY was among the first of the recent wave of galleries to open on the Lower East Side...enthusiastically promoting a fledgling scene before there really was a scene to speak of. As one of the original pioneers, SUNDAY has already established a reputation for installations, video and other works that can be difficult to sell. - Chambers, Chris. “Galleries Migrate to the Lower East Side.” Contemporary. November 2007.

The current crop of shows bolsters the optimism and idealism that goes with a pioneer spirit. The gallery SUNDAY, for instance, has a show by the Vermont painter Peter Gallo that fuses word-play and facture in a rare meeting of the tactile and the cerebral. - Cohen, David. “Catching the Crest…” The New York Sun. November 8, 2007.

For his New York solo debut, the Virginia-based Michael Jones McKean has created several allegorical installations that investigate themes of conquest and power. Objects associated with power and order, ranging from a throne to a large boom box to a conquistador helmet, are juxtaposed with symbols of failure and chaos, such as relics from Russian space disasters and uncontrollable natural forces, like a meteorite and unformed clay. - Hanley, William. "Open Season in New York." Artinfo. September 13, 2007.

SUNDAY owner and former Texan, C. Sean Horton, turned his Lower East Side storefront gallery over to Schwarz, a Dallas native, who fully co-opted the space. The artist set up a reception area in the front of the gallery with a pair of modish armchairs, a low table and a presentation binder. The vibe is pure salesmanship, a cue (whether literal or ironic) to the dealer Horton to “get busy.” - Ewing, John. "Ludwig Schwarz: The Four Seasons (Season Premier)" Artlies. August 2007.

"Vision Sleep A Bad Bad Xmas for Cursed Earth!" is a sculptural installation pairing the works of Brooklyn artist Hilary Baldwin, and the late Louisiana artist Royal Robertson. Robertson was trained as a commercial sign painter, and studied studio art in a course advertised on the back of a matchbook. He created an installation of signs outside of his home, all of which were destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. - Chambers, Christopher. New York Sun. August 2007.

Jacques Louis Vidal's appearance at SUNDAY is more than a show; it's a way of art, a two-way street for both the artist and the viewer. At the opening reception of "Wood Folks is Good Folks" the artist enlisted himself and some half dozen volunteers in a performance, which literally wound through (and into) the entire gallery installation. - Wagner, James. "Jacques Louis Vidal and the wooden folks at SUNDAY." JamesWagner.com July 2007.

C. Sean Horton is an avuncular, bearded art junkie who loves vintage country western music and Dr. Pepper. Horton literally built the interior of SUNDAY with his own hands. An artist himself, his keen eye has been honed from inside the studio, and it shows. In its first several months, the gallery has mounted a string of impressive exhibitions including Ed Blackburn's biblically inspired paintings and Gayleen Aiken's diaristic crayon and pen reflections on her native Vermont community. - McAdams, Shane. “The Wild West of NYC’s Galleries.” The Villager. April 25, 2007.

Could downtown, and particularly the Lower East Side, become the next Chelsea? The area already sports a crop of galleries. Maccarone and Canada popped up in 2001, followed by galleries like Reena Spaulings Fine Art, housed in two small rooms of a former brothel. The past year has seen the opening of at least four more, including SUNDAY, run by C. Sean Horton. - Douglas, Sarah. “What’s Next>>Eastward, Ho!” Art + Auction. January 2007.

How fitting to usher in SUNDAY, a new gallery in New York’s Lower East Side, with straight-up biblical paintings by Texas-native, Ed Blackburn. Blackburn, who has devoted his practice to biblical subject matter since the late 1980’s, visualizes canonical stories from the Good Book in a quasi-classical way. Part die Brücke wood-cut, part 1960’s paint-by-numbers and part Saturday morning super-hero cartoons, Blackburn’s paintings and drawings depict Sunday school-style narratives through wonderfully dynamic compositions and graphically bold terms. - Zechella, Elizabeth. "Ed Blackburn at Sunday." ...might be good. November 17, 2006.