The Chubb Corporation - 15 Mountain View Road - Warren, New Jersey
The Chubb Gallery Show
I’m going to tell you the story of how this show came to be - and it goes back many years.
This may be a long story, but I don’t know how to make it short.
I think it is an interesting story, as far as stories go.
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When I used to show in the East Village – I’d often take a large painting of mine to Soho, lean it up against a wall, and stand in front of it passing out invitations to my show across town.
Note: For those who might not be familiar, Soho and the East Village were the two biggest art scenes in NYC at that time (oh shut up, Uptown) though they were perceived very differently. Depending on who you were, maybe you saw the East Village scene as being amateur, inexpensive, raw, alive, current, young, wild, untested, good investment or junk – whereas Soho was seen as being established, made it, successful, professional, bigger, cleaner and more expensive...but already becoming arrogant and pretentious…which is nothing like the gallery scene today, which does arrogant and pretentious like painters do paint.
I thought that trying to merge the two scenes was a cool idea, as I’ve always been interested in talking to everybody.
So I was out there passing out invitations on West Broadway one sunny Saturday morning – and this guy walked by with his niece and took an invitation and walked on, as his niece wanted to go somewhere.
He later went to my show at Helio, and is fond of telling everyone about how he broke out into a sweat, started shaking, and had to step outside for some air.
(I think he’s only kidding a little bit.)
Ever since that time, Chuck Zoccola has been a part of my life. Our orbits seem to cross paths a couple of times every year or so.
Chuck is an avid art collector. He has almost every kind of thing hanging on the walls of his home, and he’d probably have a lot more of it if only he had more wall space.
Every room is hung salon style, practically floor to ceiling – with every breathable section of wall, table or shelf space, having something lovingly occupying it.
I see this as being the hallmark of Chuck’s collection. It’s all stuff he loves. He talks about the individual pieces like some grandparents talk about their grandchildren. I really don’t think he loves one piece more than he loves any other – just he loves them all differently, because they are all so different.
Chuck works at The Chubb Corporation.
Chubb has an in-house gallery at their Warren, New Jersey location. Over the years, at different times, Chuck was (now is) in charge of lining up shows there – and if I were between galleries at the time – we’d do a show.
This is our third.
I think they were all great shows – and Chuck always sold a lot of work.
This is easy and natural for Chuck to do, as his love and enthusiasm for me and my art is infectious. Chuck and I are a good marriage, because we like each other very much.
Anyway.
This show.
This is my third show at this location – covering a span of a dozen or so years.
I knew which paintings I wanted to hang – but I didn’t know what I wanted to say with the show.
So I thought about Chuck - and what I see of Chubb Group through my experiences with him - and what I imagine of Corporate World by extension – and I thought – these people.
How to talk to this particular group of people – as I understand them to be?
So I imagined what my paintings would like to say to them – and then I imagined what I would most like to say to them – and then I thought of all my past projects - all I had learned - what works and what doesn’t work
and I wrote the following two essays, which hang on the wall, on either side of my Gallery Guide ads, in the same room with my paintings.
Tim Folzenlogen
October 7, 2003
