James Fuentes via Frank Prattle

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

Geographic outlier James Fuentes is moving his gallery to a new 1,200 square foot space on Delancey Street where he will be closer to his Lower East Side compatriots. He moves from digs on the quaint, but obscure, St. James Place in Chinatown.

While the Delancey locale may lack the rustic character of the old space (a former Italian Men’s social club, adjacent a funeral parlor), it compensates in convenience.

The new ground-floor locale is nestled between the New Museum and Orchard Street’s gallery corridor. It was previously occupied by a sign maker.

Fuentes, a former Deitch director, opened his gallery in Jan. 2007, with cash he earned working on his former boss’s reality television show – “Artstar.”

In old school fashion, he lived above the store.

Fuentes is known for cultivating the careers of emerging artists such as Lizzi Bougatsos and Agathe Snow, mixed media artist and ex- wife of the late Dash Snow. Fuentes exhibited in the Liste art fair in Basel in June and Art Basel in Miami Beach 2009.

He opens Sept. 24th with a solo exhibition by octogenarian filmmaker Jonas Mekas entitled To New York with Love. Paying homage to the neighborhood, the show features two new works: Orchard Street, an installation of images gathered from the bustling boulevard and World Trade Center Haikus, a love poem to the destroyed financial center.