Photo: Ivory Serra

This is Chris Johanson building a massive installation of traffic, buildings and hot-air balloons when we went to Tokyo together in 2001. The whole thing was built out of cardboard, wood and duct-tape.

Words by Aaron Rose, first published Stranger 14 - April 2007

“I never wanted to be an art dealer. I didn’t have any art world experience. I just had a space and so we started putting up shows and we called the gallery Alleged after these (alleged) good luck candles that they sold in the Puerto Rican grocery stores. It was an Alleged gallery, not really a gallery."– Aaron Rose

“The gallery was most known for dealing with artists coming out of skateboarding. I worked very closely with Mark Gonzales, Barry McGee, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton – skateboarding, graffiti, street culture stuff.” – Aaron Rose

“For years and years we were just ignored by the high establishment. But I think that is more their problem than a problem with the art…This kind of art, it’s like the new American folk art. Much like in the way jazz and blues was.” – Aaron Rose 

Photo by Aaron Rose

In 1992 I painted this Alleged logo over an old supermarket sign I found on the street and hung it up over the entrance to the gallery. It stayed there for almost four years.

Photo by Ivory Serra

This is Mark Gonzales skating in front of Margaret Kilgallen’s installation at ‘The Independents’ exhibition in 1997. This was the end of the night and everyone was pretty wasted. I think that board put a couple of holes in her piece actually. 

Photo by Cynthia Conolly

This photo of the gallery under construction is from us setting up our final show in New York in 2001. We called the show ‘Sunshine’ and it was a big retrospective of everyone we had ever shown. In the end it looked like a beautiful jumble sale.

Photo by Cheryl Dunn

Barry McGee working on a wall painting at Alleged Tokyo, our small little gallery we had in Japan in 1999-2000.

Photo by Cheryl Dunn

Margaret Kilgallen (RIP) working on her installation at Alleged Tokyo in 1999.

Photo by Aaron Rose

We were walking down the street in Portobello Road in London and Mike Mills and Phil Frost just busted out white markers and went to town on this black panel. For two guys with such different styles, it’s a pretty amazing collaboration.