Karma Gallery

Slow down. Take a deep breath. Celebrate the smaller, quieter sides of life. Wise advice we get all the time, but rarely follow. So when we need to give ourselves some emotional space, we come to Karma to meditate and ponder the echoes of the small moves we make and the impact these moves might have on our next ones.

There’s a ‘let it simmer so the flavours deepen’ approach to art making here. The colors are earthy and natural. The shapes, organic. The subject matter, artful renderings of close-ups of night skies, leaves under a microscope, the silent corners of a home, and surrealist dreamscapes that transport to alternate, soothing realities.

The art shown here doesn’t shout, it whispers. And this makes us listen more carefully to its subtle details, as well as the often-overlooked edges of our lives.

The mind behind Karma is Brendan Dugan, who began his career as a designer, helping artists produce shows and publish limited-run artist books and ephemera. In 2015, he opened his first gallery in a former beverage distribution center on 2nd Street in Alphabet City. Since then, he has expanded into two more spaces on 2nd Street (one of which is a bookstore), as well as single spaces in Chelsea and Los Angeles, and a converted church in the green, leafy wilds of Thomaston, Maine.