Mark Stryker

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Paul Johnson and Al Moran are old friends who own their own galleries in New York and Los Angeles. One day in late 2014 at an art fair in Miami they got to talking about the relationship between art and the space in which it's shown. Moran said he was tired of only exhibiting art in the spartan white cubes that have come to define contemporary galleries.

"Hey," said Johnson. "I just bought an old church in Detroit."

"Really?" said Moran. "Whaddya doing there?"

"I have no plans."

"I would love to use the space."

"Great. Take it for free."

The result of that 90-second conversation has been a bicoastal partnership in which two gallery owners are reaching across the country to lock hands in Detroit. Moran Bondaroff gallery opens its inaugural exhibition Thursday in a 50,000-square-foot abandoned cathedral along a gritty stretch of the city's near west side on Webb Avenue at Rosa Parks Boulevard. Johnson, the New Yorker, bought the former Woods Cathedral, built in 1925 as the Visitation Catholic Church, for $6,700 at public auction in 2014. He has poured $250,000 into renovations.

Moran, a partner in the highly respected Moran Bondaroff in Los Angeles, expects to mount three ambitious exhibitions during the gallery's yearlong residency in Detroit. Each will be spearheaded by an independent curator and feature international artists separate from the gallery's regular stable in Los Angeles. The opener, "War Games," a meditation on the perils, abuse and unintended consequences of technology, takes its title from the 1983 movie starring Mathew Broderick as a high school computer hacker who comes close to starting a nuclear war.

The project reaffirms that the art world's infatuation with Detroit shows no sign of waning. It also offers another example of the way artists and galleries are often urban pioneers, planting roots in neighborhoods where population, businesses and amenities are sparse but real estate is plentiful and inexpensive.

"This is really great," said Elysia Borowy-Reeder, executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. "We want Detroit to be filled with art. Al is a seasoned gallerist, and we're lucky to have people investing time and energy into making Detroit art-filled."

Moran Bondaroff is sponsoring a fund-raising dinner for MOCAD in the cathedral Thursday after the opening.

There has been an explosion of artistic activity in Detroit in recent years as artists and young creatives, attracted by cheap studio space, the promise of endless opportunity and the percolating energy of the city, have moved here in droves. Suburban Detroit gallery owners such as David Klein and Gary Wasserman have opened new spaces in the city, national art and design conferences keep landing here, the street art scene is burgeoning, and the Galapagos Art Space, a commercial entity formerly of Brooklyn, N.Y., is in the process of relocating to Detroit.

Still, Johnson and Moran avoid rah-rah rhetoric. They are sensitive to their position as outsiders and know that many Detroiters have grown weary of newcomers (mostly white) blithely treating the city as a blank canvas without regard to the needs and wants of longtime residents who are mostly black. Moran is telling his curators to avoid exhibitions that specifically address Detroit history or the issues facing the city as it pivots toward the future.

"We don't know anything about the city, so we can't come in here and make judgments or criticisms," said Moran. "The reality is that if Paul had said 'I have a church in Alaska,' I would be there. But I do feel that coming here in this last year and engaging with people has been a wonderful gift. To be able to see what is happening here and meet people doing interesting things has been a happy by-product.

"My hope is that we do this as we would any other project in any other city and that good things happen from it. I'll let other people pass judgment on how this helps or hurts the city."

A heaven-like expanse

Last Thursday morning, Moran, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, black jeans and colorful sneakers, stood in the center of the cathedral. "The first thing everybody does when they walk in is look up," he said.

You can see why. The soaring, heaven-like expanse of the church is awesome. There's a balcony, Gothic arches and other entrancing details and surviving frescoes, mostly blue with modest decoration but one remarkably well-preserved painting of Jesus on a throne, flanked by angels, in a palette of reds, golds, soft blues, pale greens and whites.

According to the website DetroitUrbex.com, which chronicles Detroit history, the Visitation Catholic Church served more than 3,500 families at its mid-century peak. Membership declined through the 1960s and 1970s, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit sold the church in 1983 to Woods Cathedral Church of God in Christ. It remained in operation until sometime between 2006 and 2008.

Johnson's rehab money went into replacing the roof, clearing debris, relining the drains, addressing environmental and safety issues and the like. White primer took care of the graffiti. The space remains raw. Scrappers long ago excavated the copper. There's electricity but no running water. Porta-johns will substitute for bathrooms.

A few fake walls were under construction Thursday, and the art was beginning to arrive in crates. Benjamin Godsill, an art adviser and former curator at the New Museum in New York, has curated "War Games." The show includes a dozen artists, among them Sean Townley, Simon Denny, Yngve Holen, Haley Mellin and Anders Ruhwald.The latter, head of the ceramics department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, is planning a massive installation to hang from the ceiling.

"Art is about life and how we think about the world," Ruhwald said. "Seeing art here allows you to have a different relationship with it, and the art has a different reality that it has to live up to."

Johnson, whose Johnson Trading Gallery in New York specializes in contemporary and modern design, got interested in Detroit through two of the designers he represents, Chris Schanck and Jack Craig, both Cranbrook graduates based in Detroit. Johnson originally started looking for a building to provide his artists with studios, though that idea receded after he was outbid for his first choice. Still, Johnson, smitten by the allure of the city and stunned by the dirt-cheap prices, eventually bought the church for $6,700, along with a 10,000-square-foot light-industrial building in Highland Park for an additional $15,000. He never saw them in person, only through FaceTime on his phone.

"Do you know how many people have told me I'm crazy?" he asked, in a tone suggesting the answer was pretty much everyone. "It's been a lot of work, but it's been fun. It's an experiment. I feel like there's energy in Detroit. It's not about commerce."

As word has spread, Johnson said he's already been approached by artists and galleries about using the cathedral (which he has dubbed JTG Detroit Project). Johnson appears open to any ideas, though he's more interested in yearlong projects as opposed to quick-hit pop-ups.

Outside the cathedral along Webb Avenue, the environment resembles many Detroit neighborhoods that have yet to see the influx of investment that is hitting downtown, Midtown and Corktown. There are a half-dozen or so houses nearby, a few of which appear abandoned, and there are a couple of social service agencies in the vicinity. Central Collegiate Academy (formerly Central High School) sits a few blocks to the west.

FaShon Vega, 30, who grew up in the neighborhood and has been helping Moran with cleanup and construction in preparation for opening, said he was excited by the prospect of seeing the church reborn. He was especially encouraged by the humility that Moran and Johnson had shown in hiring local workers and taking time to listen to and get to know residents.

"This is a predominately black neighborhood, so when they see a lot of outsiders, there can be a culture clash. There always needs to be some kind of mediation or conversation. But this will be sweet. If it's done right, it could be good for both insiders and outsiders."

Contact Mark Stryker: 313-222-6459 or mstryker@freepress.com

Moran Bondaroff

Grand opening exhibition: 'War Games'

6-8 p.m. Thursday

Regular hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday

1945 Webb Ave., Detroit

Information: 310-652-1711 or www.moranbondaroff.com

'Interchange Art + Dinner'

Fund-raising event for Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

8 p.m. Thursday at Moran Bondaroff

$250. Information: 313-832-6622 or www.mocadetroit.org