An East Village grocery store is transforming into an art gallery this month

If you’ve ever pondered the aesthetic potential of the bodega chip rack, the East Village has just the show for you. Village Gourmet Grocery, the corner store on 2nd Avenue and East 6th Street, is doubling as an art gallery this month, thanks to the nomadic Desnivel Gallery and its founder, artist-curator Maria De Victoria.

From now through June 29, the shop’s usual offerings of gum, soda and canned beans are sharing space with EN EL KIOSCO, a dreamy and tactile new exhibition by Miami-born artist Juan Jose Heredia. The solo show features paintings rendered on soft fabrics—burlap, mostly—evoking a sense of motion and meditative depth. Heredia, who draws inspiration from the hazy visuals of North Miami and the oceanic pull of surfing, describes painting as “the only place you can go and deal with color, or with the temperature of being human.”

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The pieces are sensual and saturated—some figurative, others nearly abstract—and arranged throughout the shop in a way that almost dares you to accidentally knock one over while reaching for a Red Bull. One standout work, “Bunny ears of absence,” features a pink-eared figure suspended in swirling red, yellow and turquoise tones. Another, “Anemone Cerberus,” is darker and more ambiguous, where shape and symbolism flirt with the viewer’s imagination like pareidolia in action.

Desnivel Gallery, formerly housed in De Victoria’s home basement, has reemerged in street-level East Village storefronts with a mission: “to highlight the financial challenges of running an art space” and make visual art more accessible to everyday New Yorkers. “Desnivel aims to increase visibility and accessibility,” De Victoria told EV Grieve, “allowing the artwork to be seen and experienced at various times of the day.”

Mission accomplished: Village Gourmet Grocery is open daily from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. (3 a.m. on weekends), which means you can catch a contemporary art show while grabbing late-night snacks or your morning iced coffee.

If you want to go deeper, ask the person behind the counter to show you Heredia’s personal sketchbooks tucked away at the register. Just don’t forget to pay for your pretzels.