For the first time, as part of an initiative to quell the impact of nation-wide gallery closures, David Zwirner has partnered with a host of smaller Lower east side galleries to bring virtual sales to its new online exhibition venue. The effort is titled Platform: New York.
Hosting a selection of twelve galleries featuring works by emerging artists ripe among the New York art scene, Zwirner’s online viewing rooms went live to the public on Friday and will run through until May 1st. With this digital option replacing live exhibitions, the online sales have shifted from being a disappointing remedy to the coronavirus disruptions on the global art industry to becoming a source of unprecedented collaboration within the industry. Initial interest around the program’s novelty has driven high engagement for these virtual spaces. A Zwirner representative confirmed several sales made on the exhibition’s opening day, with a total of 8,000 visitors to the website.
The offerings are among the highly conceptual segment of the emerging artist’s sector. Platform: New York comprises works almost entirely readymade. The show presents a refreshing variation from the paintings favored by the market seen through global art fairs and public auctions. The digital “rooms” feel like bespoke editorial spreads made for a highly discerning online audience that expects beautiful media. The detailed imagery manages to let the hyperreality of the works come across without feeling like a simulation.
47 Canal’s show features installations by New York-based artist Josh Kline, who is slated to be the subject of an upcoming solo survey at Oslo’s renowned Astrup Fearnley Museum. Kline’s Submersion from 2019 is an orange painted lab hood, underneath which houses solvent submerged petri-dishes holding doll-house interiors back-lit by a flame-colored fluorescence. One close-up shot stands out – showing a hyper-miniscule living room that bends perception. Carrying a price of $85,000, the museum-quality work is among the most expensive of the works in Platform. Another work, his 2016 Desperation Distillation featuring a shopping cart filled with cast bottle sculptures and lit from beneath carries a price tag of $75,000.
At JJT, new works by Elaine Cameron-Weir, a Canadian artist known for her industrial-influenced practice debuted. Her stainless steel sculpture, Snake 11 from 2020 is priced at $50,00 and a second work, a triptych made of metal and rawhide comprising chandelier parts is priced at $35,000.
At James Fuentes two Keegan Monaghan oil paintings from 2019 carried prices between $30,000 and $40,000. In Bridget Donahue’s digital corner, multi-media artist Lisa Alvarado’s two acutely painted canvases texturized to appear like quilt fabric are price at $14,000 each. For the artist “the works are repositories of memory, vibrational reminders of invisible states.”
At Queer Thoughts, one of the few set of paintings in the exhibition is Megan Marrin’s The Rest Cure and Regimen from 2020 each stark and surreal-esque depictions of antique scaffolded brass showers with an anatomical undercurrent. Both paintings carry a price of $22,000.
At Company gallery, Troy Michie’s cut paper, photo and print assemblages are host to socio-political scheme and ruminations on identity with Divid Terriority and Los Atravesados/ The Skin Of The Earth Is Seamless both made in 2019 are each priced at $16,500.
At Brooklyn’s Elijah Wheat Gallery, sculptor Zsofia Keresztes’s installation Glossy Inviolability features a massive glass mosaic piece, that starkly resembles an outsider art monument, is priced at $15,000. At 94 Allen Street’s Magenta Plains, painter Nathanial Robinson’s blurry landscapes nod to a temporal blip between passing scenery. Presenting works made between 2019 and 2020, the large-scale paintings are priced between $14,000 and $20,000.
At Bureau, on the lower east side between Stanton and Houston street, Brandon Ndife’s 2020 sculptural work, Breeding Ground made in 2020, a sculptural floor-based work features a repurposed wood shelving unit hosting earthen decay. The item is just one among his broader installation My Zone which now sits in the closed gallery, realizing the work’s “post-disaster” imperative. Two of his available works are priced between $3,500 and $6,500.
