The roar of saws and a film of dust fills the air on the ground floor at 450 Harrison Avenue in what will very soon be the all-new Bernard Toale Gallery, but Bernie himself is unfazed as he gives me a tour, navigating around the big cast of characters hauling new doors, taping plastic over unfinished passageways, and conversing with loud good humor in a language I don’t recognize. As dedicated as he is stylish, Bernie Toale has been a fixture on the South End art scene for as long as there’s been a South End art scene, having moved his first-class contemporary-art gallery to this cultural frontier from Newbury Street five years ago, at a time when his only close company on Harrison Avenue was the Genovese-Sullivan Gallery and the Pine Street Inn.
Toale, who grew up in Chicago, moved to Boston in the early 1980s to get his MFA at Mass College of Art. In 1983 he founded a renowned papermaking studio in Allston called Rugg Road Papers (later Rugg Road Papers and Prints) with partner Joe Zina. " From the start, it was always artist collaborations; we worked with local artists like Todd McKie and Joel Janowitz and Brenda Star, and then we worked with artists with international reputations like Annette Lemieux and John Cage. " In 1994, Toale started a gallery on Newbury Street, where he says that rather than working with paper pulp or prints again, he opened with a Sandy Skoagland installation and photography show. " From the very beginning, I declared myself as interested in a broader range of subjects than what I’d done in the past. I also wanted to state that I was not interested exclusively in local artists. I’ve always tried to mix both, so that there can be a comparison, so we can see what’s going on in a bunch of places. "
After five years on Newbury Street, Toale moved his gallery to the South End. " I moved over here with the intention of doing this expansion that I’m finally getting to do now, " he laughs. His first show, " Pierogi Presents! The Best of Brooklyn Comes to Boston, " opens this Tuesday (a grand opening reception will follow next Friday) with work by 12 artists from Pierogi 2000, a funky gallery that arose in the farthest outpost of the New York art scene — Brooklyn — in the early 1990s. Pierogi has since attracted international attention through its exhibitions as well as through its notorious " flat files, " out of which it sells interesting, inexpensive work on paper by emerging artists, many of whom have gone on to international prominence.
Toale feels a kinship with Pierogi founder Joe Amrhein, who not only curated " Pierogi Presents! " but also helped him set up his much-admired Boston Drawing Project two years ago. Curated by James Hull and housed at Bernard Toale Gallery, the Boston Drawing Project will enjoy a larger space in the new digs. Toale will also have room for a second exhibition space, and that will open with Hisham Bizri’s new Vertices. Bizri makes films and installations that reflect his experience as a Lebanese Muslim living in the West; Vertices explores 24-hour periods in Seoul, Dublin, and Beirut, each of which has experienced colonial rule. It’s a further indication of Toale’s determination to broaden his, and our, exposure to art.
" Pierogi Presents! The Best of Brooklyn Comes to Boston " and " Hisham Bizri: Vertices " are at the Bernard Toale Gallery, 450 Harrison Avenue in the South End, from April 1 through May 10, with an opening reception next Friday, April 4, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Call (617) 482-2477 or visit www.bernardtoalegallery.com.
