Subterranean Gallery’s Ayla Rexroth: exit interview

Ayla Rexroth never did figure out exactly how much her landlord knew. Some renters leave behind shabby paint jobs or fatally scuffed hardwoods. But a move-out inspection of Rexroth’s apartment would reveal something different: an ambitious, under-the-radar showcase for local art (as well as for Rexroth’s own projects).

Until this month, the artist and her partner, Clayton Skidmore, were using their garden-level unit (and some adjacent basement storage space) as both a dwelling and an exhibition space. Sometimes Subterranean Gallery was exhibitionist in its presentations. There was, for instance, the 2012 Hot Tub Dialogues, which used a couple of thousand dollars of donated cash to install a secondhand Jacuzzi, so that artists and curators and a small crush of interested onlookers could share a hot art minute. Other shows were less in-your-face, though not necessarily less meta. Last November, Rexroth tested her curatorial skills with the simply titled and exceptionally canny group show Curatorial Studies.

But Rexroth and Skidmore have moved out, leaving KC for New York, where she’s set to start work on an M.F.A. at Hunter College this fall. Last week, Rexroth announced a changing of the guard at Subterranean, where former intern Melaney Mitchell is assuming the director role.

In the midst of packing and making arrangements, Rexroth spoke with The Pitch by phone.

The Pitch: What’s the plan?

Rexroth: I’m leaving on Sunday and I’m going to be driving with a minivan I’m renting. I’ll start in late January at Hunter. I’m going now to establish residency early so that I’ll have in-state tuition by the fall.

What are you going to study?

Combined media. The [Hunter M.F.A.] program doesn’t have a huge emphasis on social practice, but it’s kind of open media — professors working on performance and interactive stuff.

How did you decide on Hunter?

When I first started applying to schools, I had no idea what I wanted to major in. I considered getting an M.B.A. or maybe getting an M.A. in art history or going into a curatorial studies program. I had a pretty wide range. I applied to a couple of curatorial studies programs. Hunter turned out to be the only M.F.A. I applied to. The decision came down to curatorial studies or a master of fine arts, and I just didn’t think I could deal with the price of a curatorial studies program when the market is flooded [with curatorial hopefuls]. I feel like I saw just enough of that in people I admire — watching them get fed up waiting to find work with the institutions — that I couldn’t make that decision.

An M.B.A.?

It would have definitely steered back toward art. I trust commerce more than I trust, basically, arts institutions. I guess getting an M.B.A. and using it within an arts-related business that I start or help run would be something I’d feel more control over.

But I realized I’d have to take — because I went to the Art Institute, I’d have had to take a year and a half of math just to apply.

I just feel like over the last three years, I’ve gained a lot of perspective in my own studio practice, in the form of curation. I suppose I just want to take in all of what New York has to offer and go back to a setting where I’m working with professional artists who are managing international careers, not just national — basically, just learning to get all around the world.

Any plans to start an apartment gallery in New York?

I don’t think I’m done with the concept, but I kind of feel like if I re-entered that, I’d start from a much smarter financial situation. If I opened another space or another type of business, it’d be very different. It wouldn’t be an underground business — in every sense of the word. I feel like I’ve got all the day-to-day communications stuff down [about running a business] and grew up through running the gallery and became an adult member of the arts community.

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What have you learned from running Subterranean?

I started the space when I was a senior at KCAI. The gallery taught me how to write my first press release, and it took me two weeks to get through it. I feel so much more competent in my writing, and I feel like going to graduate school would help me continue to push that and give me reasons to really hash out the concepts I’m working with. At the gallery, I’d end up writing about other people, and it would tie back to my interest in the context of the space: What does it mean that it’s here?

For all the schools I applied to, my work at Subterranean was central to the process. I used a couple of undergrad pieces in my portfolio, but it was really about showing my works in an institutional setting. It’s all about referencing the domestic in an institutional setting.

That’s related to how cities get gentrified. My gallery is the absolute common Kansas City basement that’s completely unfinished, and I’ve transformed it. The midtown basement feels iconic to me. When I go to people’s houses, I’m always like, “Can I see your basement?”

Is that kind of project something art people are talking about?

I’m not sure, and that’s part of why I want to go to graduate school and study. And I’ve been living in this basement with no windows, and I get into cycles of my projects.

Who or what did you model Subterranean on?

I guess my predecessors are people like Michelle Grabner. She runs a space in Chicago called the Suburban. I always find out about these people way late in the process. I’m always finding out too late. She runs this space in the suburbs of Chicago, and she creates art objects like, for example, works that are paintings on canvases, and on the back you’ll see stuff stuck to the back of the canvas, home objects. Like, this [object] was in the vicinity of the piece and it got stuck to it. She’s always questioning the line between where art should be in daily life. I’m in the same mode. The art I interact with on a daily basis makes up the ways I organize the world and plan my life.

How, for instance?

With Curatorial Studies, I was really feeling tongue-in-cheek about this thing I was thinking about doing. I was inherently feeling very skeptical about it. I was like, “Look, I’m studying curation.”

Titling an exhibition Curatorial Studies was a pretty deadpan move.

I have a group of friends who are my editors, and I send stuff to them across the country, and they send me thoughtful and wonderful edits back. A couple of them, when they read my press release for that show, were like, “I don’t know about the title.”

This whole process has been about me trying to find out what a curator does. I’d meet with people for a month straight, and that definition is changing so rapidly anyway: Tumblr and other kinds of things, anything you like.

Has the word curate lost its currency?

I just think the word has changed in meaning, unless you are the museum curator at a big institution.

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And those people maybe never stop laughing to themselves at people who say “curated by” on, like, band-show fliers.

They all have Ph.D.s, so they may never stop laughing anyway at curatorial-studies majors.

What’s still kind of private to you?

I suppose my relationships with other artists are what I continue to try to grow and maintain very preciously and have a lot of respect for.

What’s Clayton going to do?

We’ll live together, and he will hopefully try to find a job in fabrication or as an artist’s assistant, and that’s a huge opportunity in itself. He’s trying to learn the business himself, in the studio 30 hours a week. In KC, there’s not very many blue-chip artists to get in with. He’s thrilled. And we have each other to come home to.

Would you ever come back to work here?

The program’s two years, and I need to get through that and see where I am. I’m not from Kansas City. I really like living here, so if after school I say I really want to live in a midsized city again, KC would definitely be, like, “Why not?”

So Melaney is going to take over?

Yes. She has all of her big furniture and is starting to move all her boxes in. She’s been interning with me for the last two years. She’s, I believe, planning to focus on arts writing. And she’s going to continue to curate exhibitions, and I’ve encouraged her to form her own conceptual dialogue that she’s interested in. I work so intuitively, and I love working with people. It has kept me so motivated. I’d love her to have that, too.

We’ve worked out a mission statement. The one thing we had to keep was the name: Subterranean.

What about your landlord?

Actually, he doesn’t know. At least, he doesn’t let on. I went in there and paid my rent a few months ago, and a fuse had blown down here. I’d commandeered all of the nasty basement space next to the apartment. He saw that the space, that maintenance space, was very different, that it was [painted] all white. He said to his dad, “This is the girl who lives in the basement.” And they both nodded a little bit. He wrote me a good letter of recommendation for my next apartment. He called me the ideal tenant.