Art Forum: Condo New York Opens Thursday

Written by Kiara Ventura

Edited by Lauren Cavalli

The inaugural edition of Condo New York, a large-scale collaborative exhibition, will kick off this Thursday, June 29. Its experimental format, which involves sixteen Manhattan galleries hosting young galleries from across the globe, aims to create a support system among emerging galleries by helping them gain exposure in a new city. Condo New York will run until July 28.

Vanessa Carlos, director of the Carlos/Ishikawa gallery in London, originally launched Condo in the UK in January 2016. Impressed with Condo’s pop-up gallery model and its emphasis on collaboration rather than competition, dealer Simone Subal approached Carlos about the initiative hoping to bring it to New York. Working with her friend and fellow gallerist Nicole Russo, the owner of Chapter NY, Subal managed to persuade sixteen New York galleries to participate by either sharing their spaces with visiting galleries or cocurating shows with them. “The initiative encourages the evaluation of existing models, pooling resources, and acting communally to propose an environment that is more conducive for experimental gallery exhibitions to take place internationally,” according to a statement issued by Condo.

In the past, the exhibition has involved more than sixty galleries across twenty-three London spaces, including the Sunday Painter, Arcadia Missa, Southard Reid, and more. For New York’s first iteration of the initiative, the participants include Andrew Kreps Gallery hosting What Pipeline (Detroit), Metro Pictures hosting Leo Xu (Shanghai), Bodega hosting Croy Nielsen (Vienna), and Off Vendome hosting Freedman Fitzpatrick (Los Angeles).