Triple Candie is pleased to present an exhibition celebrating the Forrent Land Trust, an urban land trust dedicated to the preservation of empty storefronts in West Harlem. The Trust aims to obtain permanent “for rent” conservation easements on unoccupied storefronts from West 147th Street to 152nd Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues, and maintain them as is—with “for rent” signs and banners on their facades. If successful, the Trust’s land-management initiative will curb predatory commercial development, slow rent hikes, and retard the rapid increase in property values and taxes in the area. The ultimate goal is to preserve the social and cultural fabric of a highly vulnerable community.

This exhibition visualizes the Trust’s plans. It includes a large, spray-painted map of the neighborhood and the target properties, a sprawling found-object floor-sculpture that reflect s on issues of cultural=2 0preservation, nearly one hu ndred photographs of the targeted storefronts—pi cturing them in the prese nt and ten and twenty y ears into the future4and an installation that20incorporates a sample Con servation Easement, rewritten for the Forrent Land T rust’s purposes. The exhibition is an attempt to float an unusual proposal and to help visitors in the neighborhood see not only the practical but also the aesthetic benefits of keeping these properties as is.

There is the risk that this massive lock-down on empty properties will only increase demand, thus providing short-term price increases in adjacent properties. Regardless, the Forrent Land Trust’s biggest challenge is likely to be legal. It will need to make a convincing argument that the properties in question all have “conservation value” as defined in Section 170 (H)(4)(A) of the Internal Revenue Code. The argument being employed is that they are “historically important structures” not for any intrinsic values they might possess, but rather for the significant role they have played over the years in maintaining the area in a state of perpetual under-development.

Case Room Selections from the Museo de reproducciones fotográficas Including works by Laylah Ali, Jo sé Alicea, Balthus, Mestre Cândido,=2 0John Currin, Margaret Bourke-White, George Condo, Gregory Crewdson, William Eggleston, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jitka Hanzlova, Ca ndida Hofer, Sarah Lucas, Ana Mendieta, Ch ris Ofili, Monique Prieto, Richard20Prince, Martin Ramirez, Mark Rothko, R achel Ruysch, Richard Serra, Tomi Ungerer,=2 0Chia Ying, Lisa Yuskavage, and others

Triple Candie is pleased to inaugurate its new Case Room with a selection of works from the Museo de reproducciones fotográficas. The Museo is a lending collection consisting of 1,200 high-quality photographic reproductions of artworks, design objects, and architecture. The reproductions’ cataloguing records—which are incomplete and based exclusively on the objects’ original credit lines—include detailed condition reports that are regularly updated each time the works are de-installed.

About the Case Room: Triple Candie’s Case Room is a 24’ x 14’ shed-roofed room with windows on three sides and a massive museum display case in the center. The 12’-long mahogany case contains 72 glass-topped, open-storage drawers, and a greenhouse-style glass top. The case will be used for temporary exhibitions.