After 80 exhibitions since 2001, Julian Jackson and Rene Lynch have announced that they are closing Metaphor Contemporary Art, their gallery located at 382 Atlantic Avenue in downtown Brooklyn. The final exhibition, Black and White will  run through March 6, 2010.

Gallery directors, Jackson and Lynch, both artists themselves, will continue to curate on a project basis and continue to be available for art consulting and lectures. In their own words: here is their farewell note:

Dear artist colleagues, and supporters,

We have been so gratified by the many critics, museum curators, collectors, and art consultants who have appreciated and supported us, and most critically the brilliant artists who have lent their work to our vision. Metaphor’s varied curatorial program highlighted exceptional underrepresented mid career and emerging artists and placed them in dialogue with contemporary social and aesthetic ideas.

As two active artists, we have worked intensely to build this project while remaining equally committed to our own studio practices and increasingly demanding personal exhibition schedules. Over the years we have been asked innumerable times, ‘How do you do both?’ Well, after an amazing decade immersed in the challenging balancing act of “doing both”, we have decided it is time to redirect our energies.

It has been an exciting ride full of connections, exponential effects, and intangible rewards. We have loved contributing to the cultural conversation beyond our own art practice. We’ve enjoyed hosting so many wonderful and large opening parties where various ages and sensibilities interconnected. Our artists and critics panel discussions and artists talks have provided a welcome forum for serious discussion, delighting us with their overflow crowds.  We have had the pleasure to provide a number of artists with their first NY solo show, and have consistently encouraged artists with the freedom to explore their most ambitious dreams and projects. Our shows have been like a pebble dropped in a pond rippling, rippling outward further and further, with Metaphor artists making new and rewarding connections with other artists, curators, and collectors.

Metaphor was founded in 2001, as an art project in a space carved from our own studios. Quickly the New York Times, Art in America, Art Forum, NY Observer, The Brooklyn Rail and other publications, were writing about our artists’ eye for curating and installation. Metaphor ran its program on a shoestring and elbow grease, but always with a view to the most beautiful and insightful way to contextualize the art with provocative installation and curatorial concepts. In this way we played out our own critical beliefs of how art should be viewed. We endeavored to make Metaphor an open and welcoming destination for the contemplation of ideas and visual surprises.

Metaphor has always been first and foremost an artist’s project, and labor of love. We believe the love we have given and received in kind, is itself the best reward. We are proud of our decade of innovative exhibitions and humbled by the support of our strong community. We send a hearty and sincere Thank You to all who have entered our circle, and we hope for the continuation of rippling effects spreading out and beyond the physical walls of our gallery space at 382 Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn.