Opening of the new Meliksetian-Briggs gallery with a retrospective of the artist Bas Jan Ader

David Quadrini is a difficult man to pin down. The gallerist, curator and artist has spent the last few months carefully choosing pieces for a truly remarkable exhibition in the new gallery Meliksetian Briggs in Dallas, featuring the works of critically acclaimed Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader.

The exhibit, which opens Saturday, Jan. 14, is Quadrini’s first Dallas exhibit in six years and shows just how far he and the Dallas art world have come in recent decades.

Originally from New York, Quadrini moved to Texas as a child after his father took a job at Texas Instruments, where he worked for over 20 years. Doing everything he could to get kicked out of Jesuit College Prep as a teenager after he couldn’t attend Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Quadrini happily found his way to college. art school, enrolling in the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. After completing three semesters of art studies at RISD, Quadrini bounced around several schools before graduating from the University of North Texas in 1992. He worked at Neiman Marcus, Whole Foods, and even MTV designing sets before founding Angstrom Gallery, ushering in a new era of Dallas art and redefining what it meant to be both an artist and an art curator.

“I was very lucky when we started Angstrom Gallery. We were really a non-gallery, but our main hope was to get our artists out of their jobs. When I was choosing artists for shows, I always thought, ‘I wish I had done that’ and that’s where I signed them up straight away,” Quadrini says of his artists.

Angstrom Gallery operated from 1996 to 2012 with several breaks beginning in 2006 when Quadrini moved to Los Angeles to manage another space and work as a special projects curator. Angstrom’s openings were a mix of both high and low culture, as posh East Coast art critics could be seen mingling with Deep Ellum musicians attending art shows for free beer.

Quadrini had a great relationship with some of Dallas’ top musicians and even contributed cover art to the band’s first major label Denton Brutal Juice, Mutilation makes identification difficult (Interscope). On another occasion, Quadrini’s late Austin-based musician, artist, and friend, Daniel Johnston, accidentally asked Quadrini’s mother for a joint at a preview. Angstrom was a freewheeling creative scene where important contemporary artists such as Ludwig Schwarz, Mark Flood, Erick Swenson and Ryan Trecartin all contributed their work to give the space legendary status. But after a stellar and consistent lineup, Quadrini ultimately saw himself more as an artist and curator than an art dealer and closed Angstrom to a very disappointed Dallas crowd.

“I didn’t want to pretend that I had the type of personality to monetize an artist’s work so I could make a living from it,” Quadrini says. “I never wanted to control the fate of artists. I’m much happier talking to my artist friends and gallery friends and helping to bring the two together.”

After closing his Dallas gallery, moving to Venice Beach and holding several exhibitions on the West Coast, Quadrini had more opportunities to work with some of the most famous artists and collectors. After a decade in Los Angeles, the artist is again called back to Dallas.

“Personally, I have always found his work to be the convergence of two things, the absurd and the emotional.” – David Quadrini on the art of Bas Jan Ader

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Six months ago, Quadrini received a call from Anna Meliksetian of Los Angeles-based gallery Meliksetian-Briggs with some exciting news. The gallery was opening a second location in Dallas (150 Manufacturing St., #214) and wanted Quadrini to hold its inaugural exhibition. The exhibition would feature works by renowned contemporary Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, some of which have never been seen before, as Meliksetian-Briggs represented the late artist’s estate.

“We wanted David because he’s an artist and we really wanted to show this work from an artist’s perspective,” says Michael Briggs of Meliksetian-Briggs.

It was the perfect time for Quadrini, as he had already hoped to one day have the opportunity to organize an Ader exhibition. The show eventually took the form of a retrospective.

“The show is a mini retrospective and takes up all of his work, down to some of his very first shows,” says Quadrini.

The story of Bas Jan Ader is special. In July 1975, the Dutch artist set sail in an attempt to cross the North Atlantic Ocean in a 13ft pocket cruiser named ocean wave. The Artist’s Journey was the second part of a three-part project titled In Search of the Miraculous. He was due to arrive in England three months after leaving, but nine months later Ader’s boat was found unmanned just off the coast of Ireland.

Ader’s work is considered groundbreaking in the field of conceptual art. He was strongly influenced by existential philosophers, Dutch artists and the works of Marcel Duchamp. His most famous piece, “I’m too sad to tell you,” consists of a 3-minute black-and-white film of the artist crying, several photographs, and a postcard sent to his friends with the inscription “I’m too sad to tell you.” It is a powerful work and widely regarded as a major achievement of postmodern Californian conceptual art.

“It’s three minutes of crying, and I feel like it’s an hour. It’s definitely from a time when men weren’t crying, when men weren’t celebrated for displaying that kind of feelings. He was very interested in creating a new form of art,” says Quadrini.

Ader bounced around in different art schools before immigrating to the United States and graduating from the Otis College of Art and Design with a BFA in 1965. He met his wife, Mary Sue Ader-Andersen, while he was in school, and after getting married, he settled into a quiet life. in California, teaching and creating.

Ader’s parents were Dutch ministers who lived through World War II. His father was executed by the Nazis for hiding Jewish refugees just 10 miles from the German border when Ader was a child. This event greatly affected Ader’s work and fueled his obsession with gravity, fall, existentialism and the absurd.

In the mid-1960s, Ader made several famous pieces consisting of films depicting him falling and into different objects, including a roof, a bicycle in a canal, and a tree in a muddy stream. His obsession with both gravity and a point where one experiences a loss of control both excited and bewildered viewers.

“In my opinion, his fall videos were a meditation on failure or injury. Personally, I have always found his work to be the convergence of two things, the absurd and the emotional,” says Quadrini.

Another of Ader’s important installation pieces, “Thoughts Unsaid, Then Forgotten” (1973), was never properly shown until the next Dallas opening. With direct access to the artist’s estate, specific notes and instructions, Quadrini claims the piece will be properly displayed.

“The most influential are ‘Drop 1’ and ‘Drop 2’, then ‘Thoughts Unsaid, Then Forgotten’. We are all obsessed with this piece. It’s the center of the show and it’s never been set up properly,” says Quadrini.

With more than 20 pieces including mixed media, photography, paintings and art installations, Bas Jan Ader’s Dallas debut, 48 years after his untimely death, can only be considered miraculous. By showing such a rare and prestigious body of work associated with one of Dallas’ most beloved contemporary art curators/tastemakers at the helm, Meliksetian Briggs makes quite a statement for his Dallas debut, once proving moreover that Dallas is fertile and suited to world-class art.

For Quadrini, it’s another feather in his personal headdress of accomplishments before he goes full steam ahead on the environmental project he and his late father, David Quadrini Sr., had worked on before his death. father in August 2022. For his next project, Quadrini has received a patent on an idea to clean and replenish the world’s polluted waters.

“Our goal since 2017 has been to fill Lake Mead forever. We’re going to make this crazy sculpture in the desert that can make as much fresh water as we want. Now is the time to do it and it will be the most useful thing I have ever done,” says Quadrini.

If anyone has the energy, luck and perseverance to do so, it’s David Quadrini. His view on art and artists has not waned in the meantime either.

“My position is that I love all artists. I love the artist’s personality and the artist’s state of mind, and I believe that art is what keeps the human race in good shape. says Quadrini.