Trend-setting New York gallery JTT has announced that it will close its doors August 11, after more than a decade in operation. The group exhibition “Playscape,” currently on view, will be its last. Since its 2011 launch on the Lower East Side, the gallery had been instrumental in igniting or elevating the careers of artists including Anna Sophie-Berger, Elaine Cameron-Weir, Abigail DeVille, King Cobra (née Doreen Lynette Garner), Jamian Juliano-Villani, Sam McKinniss, Sable Elyse Smith, Borna Sammak, Diane Simpson, and Issy Wood. JTT last year moved to the newly hot art zone of TriBeCa, where it 8,000-square-foot digs were significantly larger than its original home.
“It has always been our mission to exhibit visionary work and present exhibitions in which we believe without compromise, and we are so proud that this remarkable project has lasted for over a decade,” wrote founder Jasmin T. Tsou in a statement. “In that time, we mounted more than 83 shows, including many artists’ first New York solo exhibitions. We would like to express our deepest appreciation to all of the artists who shared their visions with us and contributed to the gallery over the years. Without all of you, none of this would have been possible.” Tsou offered no reason for the closing, saying only that “several things came to a head”; likewise, she offered no inkling of her future plans, noting that she would share those in the “coming months.”
The shuttering gallery joins the ranks of small and midsize galleries that have borne the brunt of the market’s shifting fortunes in the wake of the pandemic and amid the rise of digital platforms. Among the New York galleries that have closed their doors in the past two years are Metro Pictures and Art in General, both longtime stalwarts of the art scene. This past spring’s Art Basel/UBS report showed smaller businesses to be hampered by such factors as rising shipping costs and an increase in the price of exhibition booths at international art fairs, as well as in increase in demand for direct sales, with pressure brought to bear by ultrawealthy patrons.
ALL IMAGES