Maximilíano Durón – ARTnews.com

Sukanya Rajaratnam, Taste-Making New York Dealer, Joins White Cube

Maximilíano Durón — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 14:25:09 +0000

Sukanya Rajaratnam, a New York dealer known for mounting historically significant exhibitions of underrepresented artists, will join White Cube as global director of strategic market initiatives in September.

Earlier this year, Rajaratnam announced that she would leave her role as partner at Mnuchin Gallery after 15 years. During her tenure there, she was known for staging groundbreaking exhibitions of artists who had long been overlooked by the mainstream art world, including Sam Gilliam, Ed Clark, Alma Thomas, Betty Blayton, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, and David Hammons, whose five-decade retrospective in 2016 is still on one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of the elusive artist ever mounted. In the process, she also helped to build up markets for these artists.

In a statement, White Cube founder Jay Jopling said, “I have closely followed Sukanya’s exhibition programming over the past years and consider her to be one of the most outstanding market-makers in the art world. I am delighted that she has chosen to join White Cube and I look forward very much to working with her.”

Based in New York, Rajaratnam’s new role, according to a release, “will focus on market-making and exhibition-making” across White Cube’s various locations, which currently includes permanent ones in London, Hong Kong, and Paris, as well a seasonal West Palm Beach space.

In a statement, Rajaratnam said, “I admire the curatorial integrity that White Cube brings to its artists and estates and am excited to be able to contribute to that across a global platform. We may be at an inflection point in the market and I believe it is imperative for galleries to add value through exhibition programming and content.”

White Cube will also open its first New York location later this year and hired Courtney Willis Blair, a former partner at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, to lead the space last November. Located at 1002 Madison Avenue in New York’s Upper East Side, the space’s inaugural exhibition, organized by Willis Blair, will be titled “Chopped & Screwed.” Exploring “the idea of distortion as both a formal and conceptual tool used to examine and subvert well-established narratives or systems,” per a release, the show will include work by artists like Theaster Gates, David Hammons, Christian Marclay, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Julie Mehretu, and Nathaniel Mary Quinn.

In addition to news of Rajaratnam’s hiring, White Cube also announced that it will expand to Seoul, which was first reported by the Financial Times. Citing the success of the inaugural edition of Frieze Seoul last September, the new ground-floor, 3,230 square-foot space will consist of exhibition spaces, a viewing room, and offices. Located in the capital city’s Gangnam-gu district, it will be in the same building as the private museum Horim Art Centre, which focuses on Korean antiquities and modern art.

In the past two years, numerous Western galleries have expanded to Seoul, including Gladstone, Esther Schipper, Perrotin, and Thaddaeus Ropac, which recently announced that it will add another floor to its Seoul location. Two galleries, Pace and Lehmann Maupin, that had established presences in the city slightly earlier also recently grew their footprint. And in March, the Centre Pompidou confirmed rumors that it would open a branch in Seoul, tentatively scheduled to open in 2025.

$50,000 Latinx Artist Fellowships Go to Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Ester Hernandez, Postcommodity, and More

Maximilíano Durón — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 20:18:03 +0000

The US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF) has announced the third group of winners of its annual Latinx Artist Fellowship, which is supported by the Ford and Mellon Foundations through 2025.

Established in 2021, the Latinx Artist Fellowship was created to honor the practices of Latinx artists, who have historically been under-recognized by mainstream institutions, and to help support their careers, in the form of unrestricted grants of $50,000 per artist. (The fellowship is part of the larger Latinx Art Visibility Initiative, led by Ford and Mellon, that also helps fund museum curators specializing in Latinx art.)

Each cohort comprises 15 fellows—a mix of established, midcareer, and emerging artists—selected specifically “to reflect the Latinx community’s diversity, highlighting the practices of women-identified, queer, and nonbinary artists, as well as those from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds” and to be geographically representative.

In a statement, USLAF’s director of programs Mary Thomas said, “As the Latinx Artist Fellowship marks its third year, this cohort of artists speaks to the wide range of aesthetic strategies, conceptual practices, and subject matter that position Latinx artists as vital and significant voices within contemporary art.”

As with the previous two cohorts, this year’s fellows include pillars of Latinx art history, like Ester Hernandez, who is well-known for her incisive political prints like Sun Mad (1982), and Raphael Montañez Ortiz. Best known as a purveyor of Destructivism, he recently had his first career retrospective, at El Museo del Barrio, the New York institution he founded; it included a destroyed piano alongside works made during the pandemic.

The list also includes Postcommodity, the collective now consisting of Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist, whose room-size installation, A Very Long Line, for the 2017 Whitney Biennial, poignantly reflected on what it means to confront the US-Mexico border firsthand. Margarita Cabrera, another winner, has staged workshops across the Southwest that bring migrant women together to share stories and collaborate on touching soft sculptures, while Joiri Minaya makes videos and installations that examine vestiges of colonialism in the Caribbean through the concept of the tropical.

Two of today’s leading conceptual sculptors are also among the fellows: Beatriz Cortez, whose monumental works reflect on migration experiences via a collapsing of different temporalities and possible futures, and Edra Soto, whose interventions look at how Puerto Rican domestic architecture has been exported the world over. Cortez recently installed a series of works at the Storm King Art Center in New York’s Hudson Valley, and Soto’s survey of her 10-year “GRAFT” series is on view at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago through August 6.

Among the emerging artists are Verónica Gaona, Daisy Quezada Ureña, and Sofía Gallisá Muriente, the latter of whom was recently featured, along with Soto, in the Whitney Museum’s “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” exhibition.

The artists were selected from a pool of more than 200 nominees by a jury that included past artist fellows Maria Gaspar, Lucia Hierro, and Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, as well as curators Rodrigo Moura (El Museo del Barrio), Mari Carmen Ramírez (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Marianne Ramirez Aponte (MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico), and Josie Lopez (Albuquerque Museum).

In a statement, USLAF executive director Adriana Zavala said, “USLAF is thrilled to announce the newest cohort of Latinx artist fellows. Like our first two cohorts, these 15 extraordinary artists embody the originality and talent that abound within the Latinx artistic community. We congratulate them, and we are grateful to Mellon and Ford for their partnership and support of our work to uplift Latinx visual artists.”

The 2023 fellows.

The full list of the 2023 Latinx Artist Fellows follows below.

Felipe Baeza
he/they
Visual Artist
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Diógenes Ballester
he/him
Arteologist and Multimedia Artist
Lives and works in New York, NY

Margarita Cabrera
She/her
Interdisciplinary and Social Practice Artist
Lives and works in Arizona and Texas

Beatriz Cortez
she/her
Multidisciplinary Artist and Sculptor
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Sofía Gallisá Muriente
she/her
Visual Artist
Lives and works in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico

Verónica Gaona
she/her
Multidisciplinary Artist
Lives and works in Houston, TX

Ester Hernandez
she/her
Printmaker, Painter, and Mixed Media Artist
Lives and works in San Francisco, CA

Joiri Minaya
she/her
Interdisciplinary Visual Artist
Lives and works in New York, NY

Raphael Montañez Ortiz
he/him
Interdisciplinary Mixed Media Artist
Lives and works in Highland Park, NJ

Postcommodity
(Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist)
(Mestizo: Genízaro, Pueblo, Manito, and Cherokee)
he/him/his
Sound, Installation, and Performance Artists
Live and work in Tempe, AZ and Los Angeles, CA

Daisy Quezada Ureña
she/her
Visual Artist
Lives and works in Santa Fe, NM

Diana Solís
she/they/them
Photographer
Lives and works in Chicago, IL

Edra Soto
she/her
Interdisciplinary Visual and Public Artist
Lives and works in Chicago, IL

Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera
she/her
Multidisciplinary Artist
Lives and works in Minneapolis, MN

Mario Ybarra Jr.
he/his
Interdisciplinary Artist
Lives and works in Wilmington, CA

Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Donates 186 Artworks to Five Museums Ahead of Artist’s Centennial

Maximilíano Durón — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 17:43:18 +0000

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation has donated 186 artworks to four American museums and one European institution to celebrate the late artist’s centennial anniversary of his birth this October.

The receiving institutions are the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum in New York; and the Albertina in Vienna.

LACMA and the Whitney will receive the largest share of objects as part of the donation, with 70 and 66 items, respectively, set to be accessioned. LACMA’s gift will compromise of archival materials to Lichtenstein’s three-channel video Three Landscapes (1970–71), which the museum commissioned for its famed 1971 “Art and Technology” exhibition, while the Whitney will receive several preparatory and process works, including rare sketches for Three Landscapes on letterhead for 190 Bowery, where the artist lived at the time.

Other donated works come in a variety of mediums and date from various periods throughout the artist’s career. The Colby Museum, for example, will receive paintings and watercolors from the early 1950s that show Lichtenstein’s experiments in the mediums prior to his adoption of his distinctive style of Pop art, while the Nasher will receive works from later that decade showing his adoption of Abstract Expressionism. The two institutions will jointly own a sculpture of painted scrap wood that seems indebted to Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, made around this time.

The Albertina will receive 34 works, primarily woodcuts and lithographs made between 1948 and 1997, the year of Lichtenstein’s death.

In a statement, Dorothy Lichtenstein, the artist’s widow and the foundation’s president, said, “Given his modesty, Roy might not have wanted to fuss over this anniversary, but I’m sure he would have been thrilled to know that in his hundredth year, his work looks as fresh, radical, and relevant as ever, and is now being honored as a permanent achievement. The spirit of generosity that ran through everything Roy did is the hallmark of these initial gifts, and we want it to run through the whole centenary.”

Below, a look at some of the works that will be donated.

Frieze Seoul, KIAF Name Exhibitors for 2023 Editions in September

Maximilíano Durón — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Frieze Seoul has named the more than 120 galleries that will take part in its upcoming second edition this September, while the Galleries Association of Korea has named the more than 210 galleries that will participate in its Kiaf fair, which first launched in 2002.

Both fairs take place in partnership with each other and are held on different floors of the capital city’s COEX Convention & Exhibition Center, from September 7–9, with a VIP preview day on September 6.

At Frieze, all four mega-galleries—Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, and David Zwirner—will return, as will several leading blue-chip enterprises like Thaddaeus Ropac, Paula Cooper Gallery, Kurimanzutto, Lehmann Maupin, Lisson Gallery, Galerie Lelong & Co., Mendes Wood DM, Sprüth Magers, and Take Ninagawa.

The main section of the fair will have basically the same number of South Korea–based galleries—among them Kukje, Leeahn, PKM, Johyun, and Jason Haam—as the first edition, with the only new one being rising gallery Whistle, which had a booth in Frieze New York’s Focus section last month. (Just over half of the Korea-based galleries in across the fair’s three sections will also all take part in Kiaf.)

The fair will again be accompanied by two smaller sections, Frieze Masters (for works made at any point in art history) and Focus Asia (solo presentations from Asia-based galleries), which is being advised by Hyejung Jang, the chief curator of the DOOSAN Gallery, and Joselina Cruz, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila.

Galleries in the Frieze Masters section include Gallery Hyundai, Gray, Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, Skarstedt, and Axel Vervoordt, while Focus Asia will include Capsule Shanghai, G Gallery, and Yutaka Kikutake Gallery.

In a statement, Frieze Seoul director Patrick Lee said, “Building on the success of last year’s inaugural edition, Frieze Seoul 2023 features a line-up of exceptional galleries from across the globe, with a special focus on Asia-based exhibitors showcasing the best art from the region. In addition, we are excited to expand the fair’s dynamic program of special projects embodying the spirit of collaboration, creating a moment for cross-cultural connections between artists, collectors, curators, and art enthusiasts from around the world.”

While Frieze Seoul’s exhibitor number has about 10 more galleries than last year’s edition, Kiaf has grown much more rapidly, with 210 galleries, representing nearly a 30 percent increase over the 164 that showed last year.

Among those lined up are Korean galleries like Arario Gallery, BHAK, Gana Art, Hakgojae Gallery, PYO Gallery, and Wooson Gallery, as well as international ones like Carl Kostyál, Carvalho Park, Galleria Continua, Ora-Ora, Peres Projects, and Rachel Uffner Gallery.

Last year, the fair debuted a new section for emerging artists, NFTs, and new media called Kiaf Plus, which was staged at a different location; this time around, it will return but be integrated into the main halls in Coex. Galleries taking part in that section include Carlye Packer, Everyday Mooonday, Swivel Gallery, Streams Gallery, and Tuesday to Friday.

In a statement, Dal-Seung Hwang, the association’s president, said, “We are honored and proud to contribute to the development of Seoul as an international hub for art and culture, in close partnership with our galleries, partner organizations, and the Korean government. As Korea’s leading art fair, Kiaf will once again serve as a platform to showcase outstanding artists from Korea and Asia, with a focus on forward-thinking and dynamic contemporary art.”

The full exhibitor lists for both fairs follow below.

Frieze Seoul

Leading Galleries

Exhibitor	Location(s)
Gallery 1957	Accra, London
Anomaly	Tokyo
Antenna Space	Shanghai
Arario Gallery	Shanghai, Seoul, Cheonan
Bank	Shanghai
Gallery Baton	Seoul
Blum & Poe	Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo
Canada	New York, East Hampton
Carlos/Ishikawa	London
Château Shatto	Los Angeles
Sadie Coles HQ	London
Commonwealth and Council	Los Angeles, Mexico City
Paula Cooper Gallery	New York
Crèvecoeur	Paris
Galerie Chantal Crousel	Paris
Dastan Gallery	Tehran
Massimo De Carlo	Milan, London, Hong Kong, Paris, Beijing
The Drawing Room	Manila
Dvir Gallery	Tel Aviv, Brussels, Paris
Empty Gallery	Hong Kong
Stephen Friedman Gallery	London
Gagosian	New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Geneva, Basel, Gstaad, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong
François Ghebaly	Los Angeles, New York
Gladstone	New York, Brussels, Seoul
Goodman Gallery	Johannesburg, Cape Town, London
Jason Haam	Seoul
Hauser & Wirth	Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Somerset, Zürich, Gstaad, St. Moritz, Monaco, Menorca
Galerie Max Hetzler	Berlin, Paris, London, Marfa
High Art	Paris, Arles
Taka Ishii Gallery	Tokyo, Kyoto, Maebashi
Johyun Gallery	Busan
Kosaku Kanechika	Tokyo
Karma	New York, Los Angeles
Kiang Malingue	Hong Kong
Galerie Peter Kilchmann	Zurich, Paris
Tina Kim Gallery	New York, Seoul
David Kordansky Gallery	Los Angeles, New York
Tomio Koyama Gallery	Tokyo
Kukje Gallery	Seoul, Busan
kurimanzutto	Mexico City, New York
Simon Lee Gallery	Hong Kong, London
Leeahn Gallery	Seoul, Daegu
Lehmann Maupin	New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, Palm Beach
Galerie Lelong & Co.	Paris, New York
Josh Lilley	London
Lisson Gallery	London, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Beijing
Maho Kubota Gallery	Tokyo
Mendes Wood DM	São Paulo, Brussels, New York
Mennour	Paris
Meyer Riegger	Berlin, Karlsruhe, Basel
Misako & Rosen	Tokyo
Mitchell-Innes & Nash	New York
The Modern Institute	Glasgow
Nanzuka	Tokyo
Taro Nasu	Tokyo
neugerriemschneider	Berlin
Night Gallery	Los Angeles
ONE AND J. Gallery	Seoul
P21	Seoul
Pace Gallery	New York, London, Hong Kong, Seoul, Geneva, Palm Beach, Los Angeles
Perrotin	Paris, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Dubai
Petzel	New York
PKM Gallery	Seoul
Galerie Eva Presenhuber	Zurich, Vienna
Project Native Informant	London
Galerie Quynh	Ho Chi Minh City
Almine Rech	Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Shanghai
ROH	Jakarta
Thaddaeus Ropac	London, Paris, Salzburg, Seoul
SCAI The Bathhouse	Tokyo
Esther Schipper	Berlin, Paris, Seoul
Silverlens	Manila, New York
Jessica Silverman	San Francisco
Sprüth Magers	Berlin, London, Los Angeles, New York
Galerie Gregor Staiger	Zurich, Milan
Station	Sydney, Melbourne
STPI Gallery	Singapore
Take Ninagawa	Tokyo
Timothy Taylor	New York, London
TKG+	Taipei
Travesía Cuatro	Madrid, Mexico City, Guadalajara
Gallery Vacancy	Shanghai
Vadehra Art Gallery	New Delhi
Various Small Fires (VSF)	Los Angeles, Dallas, Seoul
Michael Werner	New York, London, Berlin
Whistle	Seoul
White Cube	London, Hong Kong, New York, Paris, West Palm Beach
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff	Paris
David Zwirner	New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Hong Kong

Frieze Masters

Exhibitor	Location(s)
ACA Galleries	New York
Ben Brown Fine Arts	London, Hong Kong, Palm Beach
Tokyo Gallery + BTAP	Tokyo, Beijing
Cardi	Milan, London
Galleria Continua	San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, Habana, Roma, São Paulo, Paris, Dubai
Daniel Crouch Rare Books	London
Les Enluminures	Paris, New York, Chicago
Eric Firestone Gallery	New York, East Hampton
Gana Art	Seoul, Los Angeles
Gray	Chicago, New York
Dr. Jörn Günther Rare Books	Basel
Hakgojae Gallery	Seoul
Peter Harrington	London
Gallery Hyundai	Seoul, New York
Mazzoleni	London, Turin
Stephen Ongpin Fine Art	London
Robilant+Voena	London, Milan, Paris, New York
Skarstedt	New York, London, Paris
Tornabuoni Art	Florence, Milan, Crans Montana, Forte dei Marmi, Paris, Rome
Axel Vervoordt Art & Antiques	Antwerp, Hong Kong
Wooson Gallery	Daegu

Focus Asia

Exhibitor	Location(s)	Artist
A-Lounge	Seoul	Soojung Jung
Capsule Shanghai	Shanghai	Mevlana Lipp
Cylinder	Seoul	Sinae Yoo
G Gallery	Seoul	Woo Hannah
Lawrie Shabibi	Dubai	Hamra Abbas
Marco Gallery	Osaka	Taichi Yoshimura
Nova Contemporary	Bangkok	Prae Pupityastaporn
White Noise	Seoul	Rondi Park
Yeo Workshop	Singapore	Priyageetha Dia
Yutaka Kikutake Gallery	Tokyo	Yuko Mohri

Kiaf Seoul

2448 ARTSPACE
2Gil29 Gallery
313 ART PROJECT
ALLME ARTSPACE
Alzueta Gallery
ARARIO GALLERY
Art Front Gallery
Art SoHyang
ARTPARK
Artside Gallery
Artspace H
Asia Art Center
ATELIER AKI
BAIK ART
BAIKSONG GALLERY
BHAK
Bienvenu Steinberg & J
biscuit gallery
Bode Galerie
BON GALLERY
Carl Kostyál
Carlye Packer
Carvalho Park
Cassina Projects
Chosun Art Gallery
Chung Art Gallery
Chung Jark Gallery
CMay Gallery
Cob
Colector
Cristea Roberts Gallery
Dado Art Gallery
DATE GALLERY
Denny Gallery
Der-Horng Art Gallery
DIE GALERIE
Dohing Art
DONG SOONG GALLERY
Dongsanbang Gallery
Dongwon Gallery
Duarte Sequeira
DURU ARTSPACE
e.jung Gallery
Eligere
Everyday Mooonday
G Gallery
Galeria Fran Reus
Galerie Carzaniga
Galerie Droste
Galerie GAIA
Galerie Isabelle Lesmeister
Galerie Klose Contemporary Tommorow
Galerie Kornfeld
Galerie LJ
Galerie Marguo
Galerie Pici
Galerie Stephanie
Galerie Thomas
Galerie Vazieux
GALERIE VON&VON
Galerie Zwischen
Galleria Continua
Gallery 361
Gallery 41
Gallery Apple
GALLERY ARTSOOP
Gallery Bakyoung
Gallery BANDITRAZOS
Gallery Baum
Gallery Daon
Gallery Delaive
Gallery Doll
Gallery FINE
Gallery FM
Gallery Focus
Gallery Gabi
Gallery Godo
Gallery Grimson
Gallery Hyundai
Gallery idm
Gallery iLHO
Gallery Imazoo
Gallery J. ONE
Gallery Jeon
Gallery JINSUN
Gallery JJ
Gallery Joeun
GALLERY JUYOUNG
Gallery KUZO
Gallery MAC
Gallery MANO
GALLERY MARE
GALLERY MARK
Gallery MIZ
Gallery NoW
GALLERY PALZO
Gallery Planet
Gallery Q
Gallery Sein
Gallery Sejul
GALLERY SEOHWA
Gallery Seorim
Gallery Shilla
Gallery Sklo
GALLERY SOHEON & SOHEON Contemporary
GALLERY SP
Gallery STAN
Gallery Tsubaki
Gallery We
Gallery Woo
Gallery Woong
GALLERY YEH
Gallery YOON
Gallery2
gallerychosun
GalleryMEME
Gana Art
Garam Gallery
Hakgojae Gallery
Hana Art Gallery
Hidden M Gallery
HOFA Gallery
IAH
isart gallery
Jack Bell Gallery
JJ JOONG JUNG GALLERY
Johyun Gallery
JOONGANG GALLERY
K.O.N.G. GALLERY
Kamakura Gallery
Keumsan Gallery
KICHE
KIDARI GALLERY
Kukje Gallery
KwanHoon Gallery
L21 Gallery
LA BIBI Gallery
Lazy Mike
LEE & BAE
LEE EUGEAN GALLERY
Leeahn Gallery
LEEHWAIK GALLERY
LEESEOUL GALLERY
LKIF GALLERY
Lucie Chang Fine Arts
LYNN Fine Art Gallery
MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY
Mind Set Art Center
Mizoe Art Gallery
Mizuma & Kips
MOIN Gallery
Mrs.
MYUNG GALLERY
Newchild Gallery
Nine Gallery
Obscura
Ocean Gallery
Odds and Ends
Opera Gallery
Ora-Ora
Over The Influence
Pangee
PARKRYUSOOK GALLERY
Patricia Low Contemporary
Peres Projects
Picasso Gallery
Pigment Gallery
PKM Gallery
PNC Gallery
PYO Gallery
Rachel Uffner Gallery
RHO GALLERY
ROW GALLERY
SARAI Gallery (SARADIPOUR)
Seo Gallery
SEOJUNG ART
Seoshin Gallery
SH Gallery
SINMI Gallery
SM Fine Art Gallery
SONG ART GALLERY
SOUL ART SPACE
SPACE NAMU GALLERY AURORA
Space Willing N Dealing
SrHCROWN
Steve Turner
Streams Gallery
SUNGALLERY
Suomei M50 Gallery
Suppoment Gallery
Swivel Gallery
The Columns Gallery
The Hole
The Page Gallery
The Spectacle Group
ThisWeekendRoom
Ting Ting Art Space
Topohaus
Triumph Gallery
Tuesday to Friday
UARTSPACE
UM Gallery
V&E ART
Vit Gallery
Wellside Gallery
Whitestone Gallery
Wooson Gallery
Yeasung Gallery
YEEMOCK GALLERY
YESONG GALLERY
Yumiko Chiba Associates
Yusto / Giner

After Firing by Hunter College, Artist Shellyne Rodriguez Says School Has ‘Capitulated’ to ‘Racists, White Nationalists, and Misogynists’

Maximilíano Durón — Wed, 24 May 2023 18:37:30 +0000

On Tuesday evening, New York’s Hunter College fired artist Shellyne Rodriguez, an adjunct professor with the school, after video circulated online showing an incident in which she confronted a group called Students for Life of America on the school’s campus on May 2.

Rodriguez had taught in the art department at Hunter, which is part of the City University of New York system, since 2017. She is known for work that deals with “strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation,” according to an artist statement on her website.

In a statement sent to ARTnews, Rodriguez said that the May 2 incident had involved the “use of profanity” and the “tossing [of] the postcards and the metal container of rubber fetuses” that the students had at the table.

In the video that was circulated by Students for Life of America, a nonprofit group that identifies as “one of the leading pro-life advocacy organizations in the world,” and was subsequently picked up by right-wing outlets like Breitbart and the Citizen Free Press, Rodriguez appears to tell the students, “You’re not educating shit. This is fucking propaganda.” The students do not appear to have been harmed in the incident, according to the footage.

Shortly thereafter, Rodriguez said Hunter College administration had asked her “to issue an apology … which I did,” adding in her statement, “Yet before the process could be completed, on May 19th, Students for Life circulated a manipulated video of the incident on social media and mobilized their members and supporters to attack me. For the past two weeks, I have been inundated with vile and hateful emails, texts, and voicemails nonstop.”

Earlier this week, Breitbart and Fox News picked up the story. In a follow-up story published on Tuesday, the New York Post released video of Rodriguez appearing to confront Reuven Fenton, a reporter with a byline on the story that contained the footage, which labeled her a “manic art professor.”

Fenton had gone to Rodriguez’s apartment in the Bronx and had, according to the story, identified himself as a journalist. A spokesperson for Rodriguez said that Fenton and the cameraperson did not identify themselves and “did not use the intercom to gain access, and appear to have been trespassing inside the building when they pounded on her door and started yelling at her through the door.”

According to the article, Rodriguez allegedly shouted from behind the door, in a moment not captured on video released with the story: “Get the f–k away from my door, or I’m gonna chop you up with this machete!” In the video, Rodriguez emerges from her apartment with what appears to be a machete and holds it up to Fenton.

Rodriguez’s statement did not directly address the incident with Fenton, though she did say that the entire situation had “taken a toll on my mental health, robbing me of my sense of safety, and creating reasonable fear that they would show up at my home to cause me physical harm, as has happened with so many other women who have similarly had their personal info exposed as a form of politically motivated harassment.”

In a statement circulated to the press on Tuesday evening, a spokesperson for Hunter College wrote, “Hunter College strongly condemns the unacceptable actions of Shellyne Rodriguez, and has taken immediate action. Rodriguez has been relieved of her duties at Hunter College effective immediately, and will not be returning to teach at the school.”

When contacted by ARTnews, a spokesperson for Hunter declined to confirm the timing or specific cause of the firing and referred back to its press statement.

Rodriguez said in her statement that the school had “capitulated” to “racists, white nationalists, and misogynists.”

Following the Post report on Tuesday, the publication ran a follow-up an article written by its editorial board that was headlined “Hunter College freakout proves left loves violence and hates speech.”

In her statement, Rodriguez wrote, “As much as this incident has stakes for my life, it is ultimately just one part of a broader political struggle taking place across the country. Right wing media organizations are weaponizing and sensationalizing this case to further their agenda, and using me as a prism through which to project their attacks on women, trans people, black people, Latinx people, migrants, and beyond.”

Wendy Olsoff, a cofounder of P.P.O.W, the New York gallery that represents Rodriguez, compared the situation to when the American Family Association and Reverend Donald Wildmon went after David Wojnarowicz, whose estate is also on the gallery’s roster. Wojnarowicz was gay and spoke openly about governmental ignorance of AIDS, causing some Christian groups to term his art “blasphemous.”

“Now I feel like nothing has changed and, in fact, the strategies of these organizations have gotten more sophisticated,” Olsoff said in a statement to ARTnews. “Now all organizations, like the AFA, have to do is manipulate an iPhone video and characterize Rodriguez as an insane gay black woman professor. With the click of a button, their hateful message of fear, violence, racism, sexism, and homophobia can be sent across the country and the world—meant to target people of color, the LGBTQAI+, women’s rights and anyone who doesn’t fall in line with their agenda.”

Hauser & Wirth to Open in SoHo, Its Third Space in New York

Maximilíano Durón — Tue, 23 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Hauser & Wirth, which has recently opened locations in far-flung locales like Menorca, Monaco, and Southampton, will add one more to its portfolio of 15 exhibition spaces. This time, however, the mega-gallery will set up shop just south of where it already operates two spaces.

This fall, Hauser & Wirth will open in SoHo, at 134 Wooster, once occupied by Gagosian Gallery when SoHo was New York’s main gallery neighborhood. It will be Hauser & Wirth’s third space in the city, after ones in Chelsea and the Upper East Side. And next year, Artfarm, an independent hospitality group that was founded by gallery cofounders Iwan and Manuela Wirth in 2014, will open a new restaurant kitty-corner to the SoHo space, at 130 Prince Street.

The SoHo space shows that Hauser & Wirth, one of the biggest galleries in the world, is continuing to expand. In February, it opened a second space in Los Angeles, across town in a former vintage car showroom in West Hollywood. Later this year, it will open a space in Paris in a 19th-century hôtel particulier in the city’s 8th arrondissement.

“It’s not that we were looking for a space in SoHo,” Marc Payot, Hauser & Wirth president, told ARTnews in an interview. “But this space became available and that’s what figured in our wish to be present there. We have a tendency to go to places where others don’t go.”

He added, “SoHo is definitely not the place where galleries are—there are really only very few.”

Located at 134 Wooster Street, just north of Prince Street, the ground-floor gallery, with 16-and-a-half-foot ceilings and 4,000 square feet of space, is one of the few remaining single-story buildings in the city’s SoHo-Historic Cast Iron District. As with past projects, the gallery will maintain the building’s architecture, which dates back to 1920 when it was built as a truck garage.

“For most of our galleries, we have transformed existing spaces into galleries,” Payot said. “When possible, we like to respect the original architecture and pay tribute to that when it is a beautiful space. In this case, a well-proportioned, simple space with skylights is ideal. It’s also very different from what we have in Chelsea or Uptown. We loved it, as it was in its bones.”

Looking at History

The block is rich with art history. From 1991 to 1999, 134 Wooster was the downtown location for Gagosian. Afterward, the gallery, like countless others at the turn of the 21st century, decamped for Chelsea. (In the years since, it has been used as a retail space, with its most recent one being an Adidas store, per a listing on LoopNet from last year.)

Down the street, in the 1970s, dealer Heiner Friedrich set up the New York iteration of his gallery at 141 Wooster, and it was there that he cofounded the Dia Art Foundation with Philippa de Menil and Helen Winkler. Friedrich’s final exhibition in that space is now an iconic work of Land Art, Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room, where it has been on long-term view since 1977. On the corner, at Prince Street, was the location of FOOD, the artist-run restaurant founded by Gordon Matta-Clark, Carol Goodden, and Tina Girouard.

“That history and density of culture fascinated us, and we felt that was absolutely perfect in terms of the context of where we want to be,” Payot said.

For just over two decades, SoHo reigned as the premier gallery neighborhood in New York. In 1968, Paula Cooper was the first art dealer to open a commercial gallery space in SoHo, which was located on Prince Street. From 1972 to 1996, Paula Cooper was located on the same block of Wooster Street, before moving to West 21st Street in Chelsea. Other dealers soon followed, with 420 West Broadway hosting several galleries over the course of its history, including Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend, André Emmerich, and Mary Boone.

Since the exodus to Chelsea in the mid-’90s, few galleries have remained or opened in SoHo, with the exception of June Kelly and Louis K. Meisel, which are still active, and Team Gallery, which operated on Grand Street and closed in 2020. From 1996 to 2010, Deitch Projects operated a few blocks south, at 18 Wooster Street, then the home of the Swiss Institute, which Jeffrey Deitch reopened as his space in 2016. In January, Los Angeles–based dealer Nino Mier opened a new space on Crosby Street, just south of Spring Street.

The Scene Downtown

Hauser & Wirth’s opening in SoHo marks its first official gallery space in Lower Manhattan, though its founders did operate a temporary space out of an apartment on Franklin Street some three decades ago.

Gallery cofounder Iwan Wirth first had a presence in the city in partnership with David Zwirner, who at the time had a gallery at 43 Greene Street in SoHo. Under the name Zwirner & Wirth, that enterprise ran on the Upper East Side on 69th Street from 2000 to 2009, when Hauser & Wirth took over the space. It first opened in Chelsea in 2013 on West 18th Street, which it closed in 2016. In New York, the gallery continues to operate its 69th Street location in addition to a custom-built space on West 22nd Street, which opened in 2020.

The nearby neighborhood of Tribeca is a more common destination for galleries these days, with PPOW, JTT, Andrew Kreps, James Cohan, and Canada relocating there in recent years. Alexander Gray Associates and Marian Goodman Gallery have announced plans to open in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, the David Zwirner–affiliated space 52 Walker, which is run by Ebony L. Haynes, opened in the October 2021, and Pace Gallery founder Arne Glimcher opened his own project space, 125 Newbury, on Broadway last fall.

Those galleries won’t be far off from Hauser & Wirth’s SoHo location, which will be a short walk away.

“Maybe if we had found the right space in Tribeca, who knows,” Payot said. “But it is a very different situation to have a show in Chelsea in this Annabelle Selldorf building, with its great proportions, or a townhouse uptown, which is intimate. This garage space in SoHo downtown feels very different. To create these different spaces for our artists is fundamentally what we are excited about.”

Looking to the Future

Unlike Hauser & Wirth’s other spaces, the forthcoming SoHo one will operate slightly differently. The shows will be on view for longer periods of time, as a way to encourage more sustained engagement with the shows. It’s an approach that takes into account “who is in SoHo,” which at the moment isn’t the most heavily trafficked neighborhood as an art hub, according to Payot.

“It gives the opportunity to visit in a similar way that you would visit a museum—we’re not caught in a six-times-a-year rotation,” he said. “Depending on what the show is, the gallery will create links with the cultural landscape of the city.”

Additionally, Hauser & Wirth announced that Artfarm, an independent hospitality group that was founded by gallery cofounders Iwan and Manuela Wirth in 2014, will open a new restaurant kitty-corner to the SoHo space, at 130 Prince Street, next year.

Artfarm currently operates two of the three restaurants at Hauser & Wirth’s locations, Manuela at its downtown Los Angeles space and the Roth Bar & Grill at its Somerset gallery. (The third restaurant, the Cantina in Menorca, is operated by the local Bodegas Binifadet.) Additionally, Artfarm operates a five-star boutique hotel in Scotland, the Fife Arms, as well as the Audley Public House in Mayfair and the Groucho Club in London’s Soho, among other properties.

“New York is a very dense urban environment so it’s not comparable to these places but what is the same and what has the same ethos is that proximity between the gallery and a restaurant,” Payot said. “Because these two spaces were available at the same time, we said this is a unique opportunity in New York to mirror these two very important entities for us. We love that proximity that creates spaces where artists want to be and where our community wants to participate.”

Five Shows to Catch in Tribeca This Weekend

Maximilíano Durón — Fri, 19 May 2023 16:11:17 +0000

Much has been written about the recent mass influx of galleries to Tribeca over the past several years, but what about the art? I’m happy to report that there are a lot of great shows to see in the neighborhood this spring, with some galleries mounting their best shows this year so far.

Below, a look at five of the finest shows on view in the neighborhood.

The Best Booths at 1-54 New York’s 2023 Edition

Maximilíano Durón — Fri, 19 May 2023 09:45:00 +0000

The 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair has returned to New York for its 2023 edition, which runs until Sunday at 439 West 127th Street in Harlem (the space formerly occupied by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise).

Bringing together 26 exhibitors, this tightly curated fair has a lot of gems and exceptional art on view across four floors, showing the diversity of art from Africa and its diaspora, which this fair has been instrumental in showcasing for a decade now.

Below, a look at the best booths at the 1-54 New York fair.

The Best Booths at Frieze New York 2023, From a Jack Whitten Tribute to a Lament for Roe v. Wade’s Overturning

Maximilíano Durón — Thu, 18 May 2023 00:45:04 +0000

As Frieze New York opened to VIPs this Wednesday, midway through the second week of fairs the city has seen in a row, a line stretched toward 11th Avenue. Everyone seemed buzzed with excitement, and the energy continued to be felt inside, where thrumming crowds were packed into the aisles. By the day’s end, several dealers reported robust sales.

Among those in attendance were collectors like Lonti Ebers, Maja Hoffmann, Estrellita Brodsky, Komal Shah, Pamela Joyner, and Ricard Agakawa, as well as museum directors and curators like Johanna Burton and Naomi Beckwith. Former Real Housewives of New York star Kelly Killoren Bensimon even pushed me out of the way to take a photo in front of a Jack Whitten work.

Below, a look at the best on offer at the 2023 edition of Frieze New York, which runs until May 21 at the Shed in Hudson Yards.

Joe Bradley Heads to Mega-Gallery David Zwirner Two Years After Decamping from Gagosian to Petzel

Maximilíano Durón — Tue, 16 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Artist Joe Bradley has joined the roster of mega-gallery David Zwirner two years after he left Gagosian for Petzel. He will have his first solo show with the gallery at its New York location next year.

Bradley joined Petzel in 2021 and had his only solo show with the gallery, his first in New York in six years, in 2022. News of Bradley’s departure from Petzel was first rumored in Artnet News’s “Wet Paint” column last month.

Prior to joining Petzel, Bradley had been with Gagosian since 2015, having joined the gallery from Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, which first began showing him in 2011. That was the year he had his last solo show with New York’s Canada gallery, which had shown him since 2006. (Bradley has maintained a relationship with Canada throughout his various other gallery representation deals, and that relationship will continue now that he has joined Zwirner.)

When Bradley got representation with Petzel, he also announced that he had signed on with Xavier Hufkens in Brussels and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, which has locations in Vienna and Zurich. Hufkens mounted a Bradley solo this past September, and Presenhuber’s solo for Bradley is on view at its Vienna location until May 25. Bradley will continue to work with both Hufkens and Presenhuber.

Bradley is best known for his layered abstractions in which blobs of color and lines meld together, creating dense scenes that hint at some kind of figuration. His current Presenhuber show, however, shows another side of the artist, focusing on his sculptures and works on paper.

In an email to ARTnews, dealer David Zwirner said he had been “a committed fan” of Bradley’s since his first showing at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in 2011, adding, “I remember finding that show extremely powerful and inspiring. While he is of course first and foremost probing the possibilities of abstraction, I also love his hide-and-seek approach to figuration, especially in the most recent work.”