Love Among the Ruins: 56 Bleecker Gallery and Late 80s New York. Exhibition curated by Bill Stelling, Maynard Monrow and Susan Martin.  Catalog by Some Serious Business with Howl! Happening. 
 
As new generations rediscover New York in the late 80s, in his essay for this catalog Bill Stelling, gallery director of 56 Bleecker Gallery and co-curator of Love Among the Ruins, writes about the gallery and the era of AIDS with truthfulness and clarity.
Art Lives Forever
Love Among the Ruins is a memoir written on the walls of a gallery. Like many, I remember a time of art, sex, and death. There were corollaries of cocaine and heroin, and walks down to Avenue D to visit Chuleta, or whomever else happened to be standing on that corner. You would run into famous people there. This show isn’t about scholarly documentation; it ranges far into the subconscious of that period, showing the world through the creativity of its inhabitants. You will see works by people who never had a show at 56 Bleecker, but who were part of its world.
The middle of the 2010’s has been about rediscovering the 1980’s. Jean-Michel has assumed mythic status, even though he was a petulant brat, a radiant child of drug-induced paranoia. If you knew Jean, you will understand. Area, CBGB, Fun Gallery, and Club 57 are the subject of museum retrospectives. I try to remember what we were nostalgic about during the 80’s. I think we disdained nostalgia, but I am not sure. All we were sure about was that art lived forever.
By the late 80s, the relatively dewy-eyed East Village art scene of 1982 had been invaded by fashion and media. 56 Bleecker stepped slightly out of the neighborhood and embraced this confluence of art, trend, nightclubbing, performance, and style. It also was caught in the vortex of AIDS, as when Keith stopped by the gallery to say his final farewells. We showed a hundred drawings by Vittorio Scarpati, done from his hospital bed, as he was being kept alive on a ventilator. He was not able to attend his opening exhibition.
I blame it on Patrick Fox. He started this wild, mad gallery in the ruins of the Anderson Theater, attracting the cool, the hip, and the talented. He shaped its aesthetic, and when he walked away from his eponymous gallery after the move to Bleecker Street, all that was left was the Tin Room.
I was brought in by Dean Rolston and Jason Vass like a janitor to clean up broken glass. The name was changed, and Dean wanted the place to have a slightly more pretentious presence. He separated the “56” from the “Bleecker,” as they do in France, and thus 56, Bleecker Gallery. If you knew Dean, you will understand. Our business cards had to be square; the graphics had to be magnificent. We can thank David Pace for that. I look at mine now and am glad that it still pulses with that era. 
Note: the essay continues at https://www.howlarts.org/howler-blog/bill-stellings-essay-art-lives-forever-from-the-catalogue-of-love-among-the-ruins-opening-september-10th-howl-happening/