Zeitgeist Gallery: Detroit loses a surreal treasure
Posted December 24, 2008 by bec_young
I'm sad to report that Zeitgeist Gallery in Detroit has shut it's doors for good.
For eleven years, the group that ran Zeitgeist provided a great venue for raw, uncensored art shows, poetry readings, music, and avant-garde theater in their building on Michigan Avenue. Before I moved to Detroit from Ann Arbor, Zeitgeist was one of the first places in Detroit I would frequent, for the shows of contemporary European surrealists organized by the legendary Jacques Karamanoukian. As the website promised, Zeitgeist always showed work which was "intuitive, dark, juicy, pure, untainted, and imaginative to the highest quality," and freely experimental.
In their usual extreme fashion, they pretty much only showed work by either local Detroit artists or by European artists. Because of this, they nurtured the work of incredible Detroit artists, such as Maurice Greenia Jr., aka. Maugre, who recently had a huge show of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. For twenty years, Maugre has been the weekly creator of "the Poetry Express," in which he fills a page with his surrealistic poetry and drawings, and he recently started a new blog. Other Detroit artists that were associated with Zeitgeist include James Puntigam, aka. DMC, Diane Alva, Vito Valdez and Mary Herbeck. Karl Schneider, one of the first artists involved with the space, still operates Izzy's Raw Art Gallery. Izzy's is located directly across Michigan, a street that is now, with Zeitgeist's closing, considerably less colorful and creative.
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