by Emma Riva / Photo by Chris Uhren
As of this September, gallerists Lucas Regazzi and Patrick Bova of Brooklyn, NY have moved their contemporary art gallery, april april, to Pittsburgh. This marks both a great addition the city’s art scene and a resounding vote of confidence in Pittsburgh’s place in the art world. I am so proud to publish the first interview with Bova and Regazzi on their gallery’s future. Their first show in Pittsburgh, Paul Peng: Intentions opens September 13th. Please enjoy this interview, and hope to see you at the opening. – ER
Petrichor: Why did you choose to move your gallery to Pittsburgh?
Lucas: We first visited the city a few autumns ago and felt surprised by its beauty. We stayed the weekend to meet with an artist, and when we weren’t at their studio, we were walking the riverfront trails, looking at the bridges against the changing leaves. Sort of just following our awe around the city. At the time, Lexi Bishop was doing here Gallery, friends in New York put us onto Fungus, Wild Life: Elizabeth Murray and Jessi Reaves was on view at the Carnegie—a show that moved us. We kept coming back for fun over the years—to see the International, to visit friends we’d met here on special occasions. The cultural energy of the place is a fact! It felt exciting to imagine we could work toward participating in it, so we did.
Could you give a little background about the gallery itself—how did you develop the concept, and also how did you pick out its name?
Patrick: “april april”—a poetic utterance, like a spell—was already on Lucas’s mind and skin (he has april tattooed above each knee) prior to our meeting in 2018. We’re born a year and a day apart in the month of April, so when we did meet the doubling felt kismet.
After both working in galleries and other contemporary art contexts in New York and Toronto, we started making shows in 2021 as april april in the front room of our Brooklyn apartment. We were inspired by friends doing the same (like Petra Bibeau) and the storied history of apartment galleries in cities. The gallery existed for three years in this very real live/work/art format.
For people to get to know you—What kind of art do you like? Who are some of your favorite artists working today, both locally and nationally?
L: The artists we make projects with are some of the artists we feel most excited by! I think generally we’re drawn to work that articulates an urgent way of thinking or being in the world, that’s not overly complicated, posturing or didactic.
How did you choose the new space, what spoke to you about it?
L: We weren’t sure what kind of space we were interested in right off the bat, swinging back and forth between the desire to build out an industrial space or enter a location that read as a main street shoppe. For cost and accessibility reasons we leaned toward the latter, and began looking for spaces around Point Breeze and Regent Square. Our current spot combines a storefront and living space on South Trenton. As the project began in our home, we thought april’s intimacy could maintain through our growth this way.
P: We were drawn to the gallery space’s tin ceiling ornamentation, how some panes of glass in the bay window area were replaced with colorful ones—a nod to its history as a stained glass repair shop. It was important to us that the space was beautiful, that artists would be excited to work within its parameters.
One of the coolest things about your gallery is the poetry commissioned alongside the gallery programs. Will you be continuing that in Pittsburgh?
L: Yes! In a lot of ways the program is an excuse to engage with the local poetry scene.
We’ll be continuing the poetry program, accumulating commissions and eventually publishing them in book form. Our first volume of this kind will be launched at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair in September.
We’re also beginning to publish stand alone works by poets. Currently we’re republishing a book by Los Angeles-based artist Zoe Koke.
What are you most excited about for the future of april april?
L: That it builds a solid case for the importance and sustainability of activity outside of art world centers.
P: Bringing more people together — the gallery is a blessing in community.
april april will host its first opening on September 13 at 409 S Trenton Avenue.
PETRICHOR 
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