Tripoli Traveling East to New Gallery at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller

Tripoli Gallery, a small gallery that has made a significant impact on the Southampton Village art scene, is expanding east to the first floor space of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller on Newtown Lane in East Hampton.

This is good news for the exhibition space, which was always a bit awkward and distracting, a consequence from its former incarnation as a tile store. Since Mr. Horowitz took over the space a few years ago, it has been an exhibition outpost of his bookstore upstairs and, briefly, a hipster pop-up design store last year. Having an established and stable gallery presence there will likely benefit both enterprises.

Tripoli Patterson, who opened his Southampton space in 2005, has transformed the first floor into a serious white-cube exhibition space with concrete floors, floating walls, and exterior light control. A title wall in the entry creates a foyer and a sense of drama as a place to feature paintings, which will announce what lies beyond. After years without one, Mr. Patterson installed a similar wall in his Southampton gallery last summer and was so pleased with the result, that he said it was a natural choice here.

He said on Friday in the still unfinished space that the East Hampton site will give him not just more room to show art but will expand his potential to work with more artists and curators, some of whom have already been incorporated in his summer program. He plans to use the space on Newtown Lane as his headquarters, leaving Stephanie de Troy, the gallery’s managing director, in charge of the day-to-day operations in Southampton.

Although his mix of personal favorites from the international scene and revered representatives of the South Fork art scene always bring out a loyal following from all over, he acknowledged that his Southampton location had been a deterrent for those who just spent hours in the car driving from the city out to East Hampton and points east the night before. 

For his part, Mr. Horowitz is also excited about the arrangement. “Trip brings high spirits, a fresh vision, and boundless ambition to our East End operation.” He said he is looking forward to the association. “I am confident that over the coming years Trip will take us in directions we’d never had the imagination to map.”

Mr. Patterson’s first show in the space will be Felix Bonilla Gerena’s painting exhibition “For Lisa,” in honor of Lisa de Kooning, who once advised Mr. Gerena to be more abstract in his approach to painting. It will open Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

At the Southampton Gallery is Jonathan Beer, whose “Memory Palace” is in the midst of transforming the gallery with a residency that will end May 2 with an opening from 6 to 8 p.m. of the exhibition he is now creating.