UWS Artists Open Pop Up Galleries For Holiday Season

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Two Upper West Side artists are opening pop up galleries in adjacent retail spaces on Amsterdam Avenue for the holiday season.

Photographer Richard Corman and abstract painter William F. Mathews will showcase works from their decades-long careers in art at 473 Amsterdam Ave., located between West 82nd and 83rd streets, through the end of December. Corman and Mathews will host an open house event on Wednesday, and the galleries will be open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. until the end of the month.

The side-by-side retail spaces were vacant until the artists brought new life to them. The Upper West Side's main retail corridors have been blighted by vacant storefronts in recent years.

Both galleries are located in the same building, but display very different styles of art. Mathews' gallery is full of colorful, abstract images and Corman's features portraits of celebrities and athletes such as Muhammad Ali and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

"I’m thrilled to help fill an art gallery on the Upper West Side. We’re not the Wright Brothers – we didn’t invent the pop-up show, but we hope to give the community something it has not had in a long while. I wanted to bring something that’s light, that’s bright, that’s non-repetitive… and so the show is a mix of figurative and abstract work," Mathews said in a statement.

Corman added: "For me, the thing that is so lovely about the pop-up exhibition is that I can share stories about my experience through my photography with the people who walk in. The experience of being in front of people that I’m taking pictures of is so powerful, although at the end of the day the goal is to see something behind the eyes of my subjects."