The Tamesis
Renowned artist Zoe Leonard, whose work will be included in the Venice Biennale next week, has left one of the world’s largest art galleries to join a much smaller, New York-based gallery.
Until earlier this year, Leonard was represented by Hauser & Wirth Gallery, which has 14 locations around the world. She has now left that gallery to join Maxwell Graham, a less blue-chip gallery known for its sporadic presentations of conceptual art. Maxwell Graham will represent Leonard alongside her long-standing galleries, Galeria Gisela Capitain in Cologne and Raffaella Cortese in Milan.
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Maxwell Graham’s roster is dominated by artists at least a generation younger than Leonard, including Cameron Rowland, Serpas, Hamish Farah and Tiffany Sia.
“Zoe Leonard’s work observes the world,” Maxwell Graham wrote in Friday’s announcement. “For more than 40 years, Leonard has been one of the most acclaimed artists of her generation.”
Leonard’s work is often marked by an interest in loss and decay, both literal and non-literal. One of her most famous works, strange fruit (1992-97) is an installation composed of 300 fruit peels, which she stitched together as if lemons, grapefruits and bananas were whole again. She also i want a presidenta 1992 article describing dissatisfaction with U.S. leadership during the AIDS crisis.
Photography has always been her primary medium, and in recent years she has turned her lens towards the U.S.-Mexico border, creating a series titled “Al río / To the River” (2016-22). She also worked in a more conceptual mode, turning a room in the Whitney Museum’s former Marcel Breuer-designed house into a camera obscura for a piece in the 2014 Whitney Biennial that won her the show’s top prize.
Leonard is participating in Koyo Kouoh’s Venice Biennale exhibition “In Minor Keys” as part of the New York queer female artist collective “featy pussy”.
Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth, said: “Our collaboration with Zoe began more than ten years ago, and over the years it has been a great pleasure to work with an artist of her sensitivity and determination.” art news. “We are honored to be able to support such epic work as her ongoing ‘Al Rio/To the River’ project and look forward to watching her practice continue to grow in the next phase as she joins Maxwell Graham.”
Maxwell Graham’s release did not provide her with a reason to leave Hauser & Wirth, the gallery that began showing her in 2016. Last year, Maxwell Graham held its first Leonard exhibition in the form of a “display,” featuring photographs of historic objects in the museum that were taken in the 1990s but not printed until recently.
She is the second artist to leave Hauser & Wirth last year. In November, George Condo quit the gallery, joining Skarstedt and Sprüth Magers.
