ART-PRESENTATION: David Zwirner 25 Years
David Zwirner opened his first gallery in 1993 on the ground floor of 43 Greene Street in SoHo in New York City. Now he owns five galleries in New York and one in London. On the occasion of the gallery’s 25th anniversary, David Zwirner presents a special exhibition celebrating the artists who have shaped the gallery’s program since its founding.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive
On view across all of the David Zwirner Gallery’s Chelsea spaces in New York, the exhibition “David Zwirner: 25 Years”, feature artworks by the gallery’s artists, including significant historical work, alongside new and never-before-seen works commissioned specially for the occasion. David Zwirner was born in Cologne, West Germany. The son of art dealer Rudolph Zwirner and his wife Ursula, the family lived in a house with the gallery on the ground floor. He studied music in the early 1980s at New York University and performed as a jazz drummer. He returned to Germany and worked in Hamburg in A&R (a small record label). In Hamburg Zwirner met artists like Bernd and Hilla Becher, Hanne Darboven, and Dan Graham and began collecting their work. Between 1990 and 1991, Zwirner worked in USA in Brooke Alexander’s limited-edition-print arm, producing multiples with such artists as Judd, Lucian Freud, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, and Richard Tuttle. In 1993 Zwirner shared his first gallery with the art dealer Daniel Newburg on the ground floor of 43 Greene Street in SoHo in New York. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition was “Franz West – Investigations of American Art” (5/2-17/3/1993). “Hors-champs” (19/3-24/4/1993) the gallery’s gave Stan Douglas his first US exhibition . In 2002, the gallery relocated from SoHo to West 19th Street before expanding to Europe in 2012 with a gallery in London’s Mayfair. In February 2013, David Zwirner inaugurated a new five-story exhibition space at 537 West 20th Street in New York. In September 2017, the gallery opened a space at 34 East 69th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for special projects and focused historical exhibitions. In January 2018, David Zwirner will inaugurate its first gallery in Asia in the H Queen’s building in Central Hong Kong. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue revisiting the nearly 400 exhibitions presented by the gallery since 1993. The publication offer rare insights into the growth of an art gallery with archival imagery form the very early days of the gallery on Greene Street in SoHo, to its transition and expansion to Chelsea, London, and the Upper East Side. These works are complemented by a selection of installation views of numerous stand-out shows, in many cases handpicked by David Zwirner himself.
Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 519, 525 & 533 West 19th Street, New York and 537 West 20th Street, New York, Duration: 13/1-17/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.davidzwirner.com