The new space. (Courtesy Karma)

Karma, the West Village's beloved design shop/bookstore/art gallery, is packing up and headed to points east! Their new space, at 39 Great Jones Street, is formerly the studio of the artist Ugo Rondinone, who purchased a defunct church in Harlem in 2011 that will presumably serve as his new studio space.

Karma has made its home at 21 Downing Street since it opened in 2011, though owner Brendan Dugan said they've been looking for a new space since they first learned, a few months ago, that the current space will soon be sold.

It was a bit touch and go for a while there, Mr. Dugan said. "We're actually just packing now," he added with a chuckle. "We're going to open on Great Jones on Friday, or we're supposed to anyway."

Surely this represents the closure of some kind of cycle! Mr. Dugan said he gets on famously with Mr. Rondinone, his new landlord (no surprise, given their entwining artistic sensibilities), as well as Mr. Rondinone's partner John Giorno, a poet and performer who was the subject of Andy Warhol's film, Sleep (1963). And, Wikipedia notes, Mr. Giono just happens to be a "long-time practitioner of the of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism."

The new Karma's first project kicks off Jan. 26, a daylong autograph-signing event pegged to the catalogue release for Rob Pruitt's latest show at Luxembourg & Dayan.