Blue Chip Art Galleries Go Further Afield
A cluster of major contemporary art galleries have announced they will open new spaces across the world this year, from Tokyo, to Venice to LA
London-based gallery Victoria Miro will open a fourth gallery space in Venice, marking the first permanent space abroad in addition to its three venues in the UK capital. Despite Venice’s art scene largely coming into play every two years in accordance with the Venice Biennale, Miro has described it as an “inspirational city” for artists. Miro takes over a historical 17th century building Galleria il Capricorno in Venice’s San Marco area from noted Italian dealer Bruna Aickelin, who established the space in 1971 and used it as a platform to collaborate with female patrons and gallerists including Peggy Guggenheim and Sadie Coles. Inaugurating the space on 10 May will be an exhibition titled Poolside Magic by British artist Chris Ofili, featuring a new display of works on paper, which runs until 1 July.
Venice will also see Paris-based Galerie Alberta Pane open a new space in what was previously a carpenter’s shop. Drawn to the Italian city for its burgeoning experimental art landscape, founding director Pane intends to take advantage of the untapped niche and use her new space as an edgier platform for performance, installation, video and sculpture. The Venice branch, opening 10 May, will also feature workshops, discussions and act as a research centre. The premier exhibition, Le Désir (13 May-29 July) will feature seven international artists and relational artworks as an introduction to Pane’s programming and direction.
David Zwirner will open a third space in New York this coming autumn in the Upper East Side in the former Richard L Feigen & Co gallery. The move sees Zwirner return to a familiar neighbourhood; he previously inhabited the now-closed Zwirner & Wirth gallery that ran for nine years until 2009. The gallery will rub shoulders with new advisory firm Adler Beatty and existing galleries Hauser & Wirth and Gagosian in what is being lauded as the Upper East Side’s revival as a contemporary art gallery territory. Galeria Nara Roesler, Gavin Brown and Elizabeth Dee have already relocated. While the inaugural show has yet to be announced, the gallery confirms that it will be opening a Hong Kong location come autumn that will exist alongside its London outpost and two Chelsea (New York) spaces.
On 7 June, art dealer Emmanuel Perrotin’s new Tokyo space will launch its first exhibition featuring French painter Pierre Soulages. Following a strategic series of moves into Asia in the last several years (Hong Kong in 2012 and Seoul in 2016), this new space will be located in Roppongi, “a cultural and vibrant neighbourhood,” Perrotin said in a statement. The area also currently houses the Mori Art Museum, Suntory Museum of Art and National Art Centre, alongside several galleries. An unsurprising step for the gallery, which has showcased several Asian artists in its 25 year existence, such as Takashi Murakami and Xu Zhen, this new space marks the 15th space Perrotin has launched since establishing his first gallery in 1989 in Paris, and the eighth active venue (four in Paris, one in New York, Hong Kong and Seoul). Perrotin will also shift in New York as the gallery relocates from the Upper East Side to a much larger 2,300 square metre space on Manhattan’s Lower East Side by 27 April.
Art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (LACMA) until 2013, will be opening a new gallery in Hollywood. This new venture on the West Coast follows his successful gallery space in New York which opened in 2015, and will sit amongst galleries such as Kohn Gallery and Regen Projects. Deitch’s choice for his second branch was due to the city’s receptiveness, but despite an open-minded public, he will continue with the three museum-level exhibition format he established in New York. The space will be inaugurated in the fall with the exhibition The Extreme Present, which will tackle the effect of Dada on art making in the digital age.