ART WORLD UNDERDOG

By Danny Gold

From Brownsville to Sweden to The Hole, Derrick B. Harden's had quite a ride

A crowd gathered at Cappellini SoHo one Wednesday night in August to view paintings they weren't allowed to see and preorder an album they weren't allowed to hear. Thrown in conjunction with hipster art gallery The Hole, the event was the brainchild of Derrick B. Harden and Laura O'Reilly. Impossibly tall women and be-suited men were there to look at and possibly purchase paintings that were entirely covered in gift wrap. It was one of about four openings in the span of a month Harden had been involved with.

"If anybody can sell these paintings, Derrick can," O'Reilly told me. Harden, a recent upstart in the gallery world, has been involved in a plethora of projects, from Chelsea fine arts studios to street art shows. Together with O'Reilly, the curating and art directing duo are stirring things up in the art world, bringing a fresh energy rarely seen.

The art world, typically regarded as a pretentious, unwelcoming society more prone to jaded cynicism than hospitality, is now being won over by a curator with little care for formalities and no art education, who offers a welcoming smile and a hug instead of a judgmental glare. "I get by on the stuff they don't teach you in school: persistence, charm, charisma. It's the same thing I used on the street-the art of the hustle," Harden said.

Harden glided around the room, shaking hands and making introductions. For someone relatively new to the game, he moved around effortlessly, a constant smile on his face, beaming with enthusiasm. Attending an opening with Harden is a strenuous exercise in first impressions. You will be introduced to everyone within earshot: rappers, writers, artists, gallery owners, a bartender you casually mentioned you found attractive. Be prepared.

In June, at the opening for Fab 5 Freddy at Gallery 151 on Rivington Street, a show Harden helped curate, he hobnobbed with Diddy, Kanye West and Kid Cudi. The following week was another opening at the new pop-up Ryan Keeley gallery a few doors down. The gallery brought the Bushwick DIY ethos to the Bowery and, along with The Hole, helped give a four-block stretch north of Houston something of a burgeoning art scene amongst the glossy hotels and trendy restaurants.

"Derrick literally just walked by the door the first day I was here and introduced himself," said Keeley. "He was super enthusiastic and we just started trading ideas."

Soon enough, Harden and O'Reilly were curating for the gallery. Shortly after that, they were appointed co-associate directors at The Hole, bringing the number of galleries on the Bowery that Harden represented to three.

He had previously curated and directed shows at the Chelsea Art Museum and Michael Lyons Wier's gallery. All this and he'd only really been in the art world for four years-and lacked any formal training. In fact, Harden dropped out of high school in the 9th grade to work at McDonald's before he resorted to selling drugs.

"When you're a high school dropout, you sort of look at it the same way you look at the underworld," he said. "I call it extreme networking. It's the same way you sell drugs: you meet one person, they introduce you to someone else and you have to win them over."

Usually clad in camouflage shorts spattered with paint, a black T-shirt and a snapback hat, Harden possesses a gift for making people, no matter what world they come from, comfortable. It's a disposition that belies a harsh upbringing in one of the city's worst neighborhoods.

Born in East New York in 1980, Harden came of age in one of the most violent areas in America. In 1990 alone there were over 60 murders in the 73rd Precinct, which currently has a reputation as a breeding ground more for boxers, hardcore rappers and mafia assassins than for art stars.

"From the Italians and Jews that were over there to the black majority now, Brownsville is built on this hustle mentality," he said. "One of the slogans in the neighborhood is: 'Brownsville: never ran, never will.' That mentality is sort of like, 'I'm going to do whatever I have to do because no one is going to give me anything.'"

It's this mentality that has him continuously cultivating relationships and aggressively attempting new maneuvers. Harden's journey into the art world is full of moves and steps, connections and chances. His father disappeared from his life early and his mother battled a heroin addiction. When he was 12, Harden's 14-year-old sister was shot and killed by her boyfriend. He was the one who discovered her body.

Shortly after dropping out of high school, he was selling fake hash and shoplifting Polo clothing. During the 1990s, "Polo racking," or shoplifting, crews roamed New York, gathering as much Polo-labeled clothing as they could, putting together photo albums of their best outfits. It was one of these photo books that gave Harden his first opportunity in a creative field.

A friend told him about an opportunity at a new Swedish clothing store. He brought in his photos and landed a job in visual merchandising at H

A co-worker had a studio in his house and Harden started recording songs. Soon, however, things soured with H

Soon he was selling drugs again. After a partner ripped him off, he decided he needed a switch. A contact he had made while selling drugs got him a job at Diesel. From there he went to work at Atrium and later as a night concierge at Soho House on Ninth Avenue.

At the same time, a music career began. Under the moniker Couture Ink he recorded a mixtape that sold 10,000 copies and inked a deal with indie label Marmah Records. In 2007, his single "Ghost Town" became a No. 2 song on college radio. By that point, however, Harden was focused on art. It was also around this time he met gallery owner Lyons Wier, who would serve as a mentor.

Lyons Wier is an established gallery owner in the Chelsea scene who took an instant liking to Harden. "He became very interested in the gallery and from there we started palling around a lot," said Lyons Wier.

Harden often found himself attending openings and meeting as many people as he could. "I remember going to an opening shortly after and Clive Davis was there. I remember saying to myself, this is the last time I'm ever in the music business-the art world is where it's at."

At another opening he bumped into Nicollette Ramirez, then the creative director of the Chelsea Art Museum. "I went to an opening and there were, like, three black people there: Nicollette, Diddy's first baby mother and me, and we were all kind of looking at each other-you know how it is," Harden said. "Eventually I started talking to Nicollette and we realized we knew each other 'cause she used to come in to Soho House when I worked there."

Ramirez ended up hiring Harden at the gallery, sending him on errands to get his feet wet. "Derrick is open to everything. No experience in art can sometimes be good. It gives room for experimentation, new ideas, a new breath of air," said Ramirez. "The art world is hard, yes, but once you have an interest, an idea, a desire, a will, you will succeed. And that's what Derrick had."

He got along well with directors and soon started working on exhibits. In February of 2010 he had his first show, a collection of recycled art called Art I Found at the Chelsea Hotel, which promptly sold out. Soon thereafter he left to work at the Lyons Wier Gallery.

It was his following project, however, the first show he curated, that established him as someone to be watched.

"I had been bussed out of Brownsville for junior high to an all-white school, and that's where I met Michael and Jason," Harden explained. "Once I started working in Chelsea, I kept bumping into Jason and we kept talking about doing a show together." Mikhail "Michael" Sokovikof and Jason Aaron, otherwise known as Mint and Serf, were legends in the graffiti art world and were already established as street artists.

The three put together Mint and Serf: SGU (Special Graffiti Unit), a play on Law and Order that depicted the graffiti duo's intimate relationship with law enforcement. The show garnered a heavy amount of press and attention.

"The way he was back then in junior high is basically how he is now," said Mint. "He was outgoing and energetic, he could make friends with anyone. He's one of the best hype men I know-he could grab anyone off the street and bring them into the show."

Mint stressed that while Harden dabbled in the fine art world, he always had his ear to the ground and the streets. "He knows what real shit is. He always got where we came from and understood what we were trying to say."

The following March, Oliver "Power" Grant, creator of the Wu-Tang Clan, and Harden launched another exhibit that would lead him to form his current partnership with O'Reilly, then director of Gallery 151. Harden with O'Reilly brought Power's Wu-Tang brand to the art world, where for the first time artists were legally allowed to use the infamous Wu-Tang logo to create their own pieces. Through the Wu-mb opened in March of this year.

The pair found they had a lot of common ground. O'Reilly had also succeeded in the music industry but, like Harden, was fed up with the politics and found refuge in art. Both had spent time living in the back of their respective galleries and wanted to play their musical talents off the art world. "We had been dreaming the same dream," says O'Reilly. "It just made sense to team up."

They began curating together and working on a music project that would later become Christmas in Summer, the album now being released through Kathy Grayson's giftshop at The Hole (see sidebar). The tracks combine O'Reilly's use of a looping pedal to manipulate her own voice to create an airy, soulful sound with Harden's gritty raps. They've deemed their sound urban folk art music and say that their music "is a reflection of New York itself, from the Upper East Side to Brownsville?[They] aim to capture the contrast and the dialogue of the city, whether it be race, sex, the high life, the underworld, art, music and culture."

Harden's other project, however, is a lot more personal and could gain more attention. Dubbed No Blacks Allowed, it will be the first segregated art show. "The concept is basically how I've been treated in the art world and it's an art piece itself, sort of like performance art."

The show will contain different types of media, but black and white people will be separated at the entrance by velvet ropes. At the end there will be a photo booth where members of both races will be asked to take a picture. "I think that race was an issue in the beginning because it's the insecurity of my own ignorance, which is multiplied. The art world isn't very welcoming, whereas I think it's the perfect platform to welcome people and humble the wildest person."

His term for the casual racism he encounters is invisible behavior. "There's an ongoing white-boy culture, where you can see a lot of people don't consider certain people creative unless you're a superstar. It takes people a while to notice something, whereas if it were someone else, it would be recognized immediately. You might not ever see it, but it exists."

O'Reilly has been privy to some of these moments. "People don't always take him seriously, because he's black and in a gallery. They assume he's a handler or he sweeps the floors," she said. "With me and Derrick working as a duo, it's so amazing to see the invisible racism that goes on, the different treatment-not just between white people and black people, but between black people and black people."

Added Harden, "There's not a lot of other young men in the art world, and from some of the older black men you feel a real territorial thing," he said. It was this that shocked him most about the way race is dealt with in the art world. "It's an odd feeling; the community is already so small and I've come into situations where I thought I would be welcomed and I was shunned."

Despite the obstacles, Harden feels confident in his ability to continue to curate at a larger level. There are already plans in store for his own space with O'Reilly. "When it comes down to it, it's simply about taking action and doing things. You could meet everyone in the art world-if you're not going to follow through with your ideas, it's worthless."

Click here to read Enter Through the Gift Shop. Harden sitting pretty in The Hole galley next to Evan Gruzis and Rafael De Cardena's piece "Flashdance." Photo By Kristy Leibowitz