Sideshow Gallery was founded by Richard Timperio in 1999 to create a space that would foster young Williamsburg artists, giving them exposure and a means to create a dialogue with the larger artists community. Timperio was an urban pioneer, who moved to Williamsburg 1979 when the neighborhood was dangerous and desolate.
“Williamsburg was a place for cheap rent and space and was removed from every
thing else,” Timperio said. “It was a place for working artists, but it had no outlets.”
I opened the first incarnation of Sideshow as an experiment in 1994 in a coffee shop on Bedford Avenue. “At that time, the main event was across the river. There was no place for people to congregate and exchange ideas,” “Sideshow provided a stage for unseen work.”
The gallery rapidly gained a following and soon moved across the street to an 11-foot wide storefront. Since September 2000, the gallery has resided at 319 Bedford Avenue the Champs Élysées of Williamsburg between South 2nd and South 3rd streets. Now one of the largest private exhibitions spaces in Brooklyn, the gallery has remained committed to the concept of its artist/ founder, Richard Timperio, “that visual art is a language of the eyes as much as music is the language of the ear.” His mission is to provide a forum for “ all art that attains a high level of quality embodies integrity, regardless of style or approach. Where the art itself is the only thing that matters.” The Sideshow Gallery continues to show works by Brooklyn based emerging as well as an impressive line up of more established artists such as Chris Martin, Jonas Mekas, Larry Poons, Thornton Willis, Dan Christensen, Richard Mock, TODT, Robert C. Morgan, Robert Murray, Tadasky and many others, including traveling exhibitions from other institutions and on an international basis. Exhibitions at the Sideshow Gallery have been reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail, The New Criterion, Art In America, The New York Times, The New York Observer, The New York Sun and other publications. In addition to painting, Timperio has worked as an illustrator for The New York Times and as art director
for Showtime at the Apollo Theatre.
