David Lewis Gallery

Last updated

Front entrance of David Lewis Gallery in Tribeca (2023) 2021 10 10 DavidLewis Gallery.jpg
Front entrance of David Lewis Gallery in Tribeca (2023)

David Lewis was a contemporary art gallery in New York founded by art historian David Lewis in 2013. [1] [2] [3] The gallery was known for representation and championing prominent international artists such as Barbara Bloom [4] and the estates of Thornton Dial, [5] John Boskovich [6] [7] and Mary Beth Edelson. [8]

Contents

History

Emergence in Paris, France

Before opening the gallery, the gallery's founder worked in New York City and Paris as an art critic, contributing regularly to international art magazines such as Artfoum and Frieze. Lewis was also a professor and completed a Ph.D. examining the career of Francis Picabia. [9] [10] His academic background directly informs the programming of artists and artistry at the gallery, which, makes art-historical arguments on behalf of its represented emerging and established artists. [11] [12] During this time, Lewis published extensively, including essays on Guston, Sturtevant, and Matisse and he continued to publish after the gallery opened, including a review of the MoMA Picabia exhibition for Artforum and an essay on the history of cinema for Chrissie Iles's Dreamlands exhibition at the Whitney.

Eldridge Street in New York

From 2013 to 2020, David Lewis gallery was located on the fifth floor of 88 Eldridge Street. The gallery served as a central location for a group of emerging artists. For some of these artists, like Thornton Dial, the gallery built a critical and commercial legacy for them, who, despite the artists achievements that would lead to broad institutional acclaim. Beginning with the Philip K. Dick inspired A Scanner, Darkly , [13] [14] the gallery ethos articulated a distinct pattern of experimental voices and exhibitions, including Lucy Dodd whose institutional exhibition included the Whitney Museum's 2016, Open Plan, [15] and Dawn Kasper, whose Nomadic Studio Practice culminated at the Sala Chini at the 2017 Venice Biennale. [16]

In the following years, the gallery began representing historically established artists such as Barbara Bloom and the estates of Thornton Dial, John Boskovich and Mary Beth Edelson. [17] Some of these artists, like Thornton Dial, the gallery built a critical and commercial legacy for them who, despite the artists' achievements, had previously been excluded from art history and the art market. [18] David Lewis successfully created a reception and a market for Thornton Dial in the contemporary art world (rather than as an 'outsider' or 'self-taught'), changing Thornton Dial's place in the canon of contemporary art. [19] David Lewis was the first to garner Thornton Dial reviews by significant contemporary critics such as Roberta Smith, the first to exhibit Thornton Dial at contemporary art fairs, the first to bring Thornton Dial to Art Basel and to Europe. [20]

Tribeca

In September 2021, David Lewis relocated to 57 Walker Street in Tribeca, opening with an exhibition of Todd Gray. [21] The gallery's programming continues to focus on both historical and contemporary art, with Thornton Dial, in conversation with David Hammons and Robert Rauschenberg in 'Dial / Hammons / Rauschenberg', Claire Lehmann's debut solo exhibition, and Peter Schlesinger.

The gallery also opened a second location in East Hampton, exhibiting Thornton Dial, Barbara Bloom, Tomás Esson, Todd Gray, and Peter Schelsinger in its first season.

In May of 2024, the gallery announced it would close after a decade in operation. Its last show was called, "Everyone Loves Picabia,” a nod to the painter and writer Francis Picabia's love for composing with circles. [22] The gallery joins a list of important contemporary art galleries in Manhattan closing its doors in 2024, including Washburn Gallery and Marlborough Gallery, as well as several younger enterprises—including Foxy Production, Queer Thoughts, and JTT.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Picabia</span> French painter and writer (1879–1953)

Francis Picabia was a French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typographist closely associated with Dada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victoria Miro Gallery</span> Contemporary art gallery in London, England

The Victoria Miro Gallery is a British contemporary art gallery in London, run by Victoria Miro. Miro opened her first gallery in 1985 in Cork Street, before moving to larger premises in Islington in 2000 and later opening a second space in St George Street, Mayfair.

<i>Artforum</i> Magazine on contemporary art

Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably, the Artforum logo is a bold and condensed iteration of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font, a feat for an American publication to have considering how challenging it was to obtain fonts favored by the Swiss school via local European foundries in the 1960s. Artforum is published by Artforum Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Media Corporation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Ulrich Obrist</span> Swiss art curator, critic and historian (born 24/5/1968)

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of The Interview Project, an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is also co-editor of the Cahiers d'Art review. He lives and works in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Sillman</span> American painter

Amy Sillman is a New York-based visual artist, known for process-based paintings that move between abstraction and figuration, and engage nontraditional media including animation, zines and installation. Her work draws upon art historical tropes, particularly postwar American gestural painting, as both influences and foils; she engages feminist critiques of the discourses of mastery, genius and power in order to introduce qualities such as humor, awkwardness, self-deprecation, affect and doubt into her practice. Profiles in The New York Times, ARTnews, Frieze, and Interview, characterize Sillman as championing "the relevance of painting" and "a reinvigorated mode of abstraction reclaiming the potency of active brushwork and visible gestures." Critic Phyllis Tuchman described Sillman as "an inventive abstractionist" whose "messy, multivalent, lively" art "reframes long-held notions regarding the look and emotional character of abstraction."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Maupin</span> American gallery director

David Maupin is an American art dealer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Cohan Gallery</span> Art gallery

James Cohan is a contemporary art gallery co-founded by James and Jane Cohan in 1999, which operates spaces in the Manhattan, New York neighborhoods of Tribeca and the Lower East Side.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Lawson (artist)</span> Scottish artist

Thomas Lawson is an artist, writer, editor, and from 1991 to 2022 was the Dean of the School of Art & Design at California Institute for the Arts. He emerged as a central figure in ideological debates at the turn of the 1980s about the viability of painting through critical essays, such as "Last Exit: Painting" (1981). He has been described as "an embedded correspondent [and] polemical editorialist" who articulated an oppositional, progressive position for representational painting from within an increasingly reactionary art and media environment. Artforum called his approach to the medium "one of the most cogent and controversial" in the 80s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thornton Dial</span> American artist (1928–2016)

Thornton Dial was a pioneering American artist who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial's body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, often executed on a monumental scale. His range of subjects embraces a broad sweep of history, from human rights to natural disasters and current events. Dial's works are widely held in American museums; ten of Dial's works were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014.

Sanford Biggers is an American interdisciplinary artist who works in film and video, installation, sculpture, music, and performance. A Los Angeles native, he has lived and worked in New York City since 1999.

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is an art gallery founded by Tanya Bonakdar, located in both Chelsea in New York City and Los Angeles. Since its inception in 1994, the gallery has exhibited new work by contemporary artists in all media, including painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. The New York City location is at 521 W. 21st Street and the Los Angeles gallery is located at 1010 N. Highland Avenue.

Mary Beth Edelson was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists". Edelson was a printmaker, book artist, collage artist, painter, photographer, performance artist, and author. Her works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Public Fiction is a curatorial project and quarterly publication based in Los Angeles. It was founded in 2010 by Lauren Mackler.

Olga Balema is an artist and sculptor. One of the major concerns of her work is form, another material. Another is paying attention to where and how things go into a space. Sometimes the work can be called site respondent, other times it responds only to itself. Her practice presents mundane materials in evocative forms. She is based in New York City, New York.

Bortolami is a contemporary art gallery founded in 2005 by Stefania Bortolami and Amalia Dayan.

Adrienne Edwards is a New York–based art curator, scholar, and writer. Edwards is currently the Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator based in New York City. She is the Donald R. Mullen Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art and the artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. She previously curated the 2017 Biennale's Italian pavilion and served as artistic director of the inaugural edition of the 2018 Art Basel Cities in Buenos Aires, held in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoé Whitley</span> American art historian and curator

Zoé Whitley is an American art historian and curator who has been director of Chisenhale Gallery since 2020. Based in London, she has held curatorial positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate galleries, and the Hayward Gallery. At the Tate galleries, Whitley co-curated the 2017 exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which ARTnews called one of the most important art exhibitions of the 2010s. Soon after she was chosen to organise the British pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

Regen Projects is a contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles, California.

Electric Fan : Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate is a 1997 work of art by John S. Boskovich. The piece consists of a functioning electric box fan, the only possession Boskovich was able to keep that belonged to his partner, Stephen Earabino, following his death in 1995.

References

  1. "David Lewis | Galleries | Frieze". www.frieze.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  2. "David Lewis". Art Basel. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  3. "David Lewis Gallery — Web Design for Art Galleries — Lovably". www.lovably.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  4. Greenberger, Alex (November 21, 2016). "David Lewis Gallery Now Represents Barbara Bloom". ARTnews.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  5. ARTnews, The Editors of (February 28, 2018). "Thornton Dial at David Lewis, New York". ARTnews.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.{{cite web}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  6. Berardini, Andrew (March 2020). "ANDREW BERARDINI ON JOHN BOSKOVICH'S BOSKOSTUDIO, 1996–2006". www.artforum.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  7. Pagel, David (December 28, 2019). "Review: Welcome to 'Psycho Salon.' John Boskovich dives deep into the pain of a misfit". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  8. Greenberger, Alex (May 17, 2021). "Mary Beth Edelson, Feminist Artist Who Envisioned Women as Goddesses, Has Died at 88". ARTnews.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  9. Lewis, David (April 2017). "David Lewis on Francis Picabia". www.artforum.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  10. "title name". title name. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  11. "David Lewis Gallery". W Magazine. March 25, 2014. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  12. "David Lewis | Contemporary Art Gallery | PLATFORM". www.platformart.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  13. Pechman, Ali (November 2013). "David Lewis". www.artforum.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  14. "'A Scanner, Darkly' at David Lewis Gallery". Observer. October 22, 2013. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  15. "Open Plan: Lucy Dodd". whitney.org. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  16. Freeman, Nate (May 9, 2017). "Dawn Kasper Will Be Staying in the Giardini's Central Pavilion for Six Months". ARTnews.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  17. Cotter, Holland; Smith, Roberta; Farago, Jason (December 4, 2020). "The Most Important Moments in Art in 2020". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  18. Grimes, William (January 27, 2016). "Thornton Dial, Outsider Artist Whose Work Told of Black Life, Dies at 87". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  19. Thomas, Alexandra M. (December 15, 2020). "Enter the Rich, Vibrant Worlds of Thornton Dial". Hyperallergic. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  20. "Editors' Picks: 13 Events for Your Art Calendar This Week, From David Zwirner's Donald Judd Show to Thornton Dial at David Lewis". Artnet News. November 3, 2020. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  21. Villa, Tessa Solomon,Angelica; Solomon, Tessa; Villa, Angelica (September 7, 2021). "ARTnews in Brief: 2021 Frieze Artist Award Goes to Sung Tieu—and More from September 10, 2021". ARTnews.com. Retrieved April 22, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  22. Solomon, Tessa (May 24, 2024). "Beloved New York Gallery David Lewis to Close After 11 Years". ARTnews.com. Retrieved May 30, 2024.

40°43′8″N74°0′12″W / 40.71889°N 74.00333°W / 40.71889; -74.00333