303 Gallery Returns to 21st Street with Alicja Kwade After Three-Year Relocation

Doug Aitken destroyed the old gallery.

A rendering of the new 303 Gallery. Photo courtesy 303 Gallery, New York, and Murdock Solon Architects, New York.

Following three years at a temporary venue, New York’s 303 Gallery will again set up shop at 555 West 21st Street, in West Chelsea, on Saturday, May 7. Collectors, dealers and curators from around the globe will be in the city; that’s during the Frieze New York art fair, and just before Christie’s and Sotheby’s have their major spring sales.

303 was among the first galleries to move to Chelsea, in 1996. The gallery’s old building was razed to make way for a new one, a residential tower designed by London-based firm Foster + Partners, headed up by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Norman Foster. The new interiors are by New York’s Murdock Solon Architects, who have also built spaces in New York for Friedman Benda and Pace Prints, among others. Spread over two floors, the 12,000-square-foot gallery will center on a 2,000-square-foot main exhibition space with 21-foot ceilings, and will also feature a private sculpture garden.

In the interim, the gallery had been underneath the High Line, on 24th Street, designed by New York’s studioMDA and Murdock Solon.

Alicja Kwade, <i>Untitled<i/>, 2015. Photo courtesy 303 Gallery.

Alicja Kwade, Untitled (2015). Courtesy 303 Gallery.

Inaugurating the 21st Street location will be “I Rise Again, Changed but the Same,” a solo show by Polish-born sculptor Alicja Kwade, who lives in Berlin. It’s the first exhibition with the gallery for the artist, who has solo shows this year with both London’s Whitechapel Gallery and Amsterdam’s de Appel Arts Centre.

The gallery got creative when it vacated the 21st Street space, inviting artist Doug Aitken to enact an artistic demolition to close out his show there, the gallery’s final one at that location before the actual demolition.

Lisa Spellman and Colin de Land in front of 303 Gallery, East Sixth Street, New York, 1986. Photo: Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York.

Lisa Spellman and Colin de Land in front of 303 Gallery, East Sixth Street, New York, 1986. Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York.

Founded in 1984 by dealer Lisa Spellman, 303 represents artists including painters Maureen Gallace and Mary Heilmann, photographers Elad Lassry and Collier Schorr, and installation artist Mike Nelson, as well as Sonic Youth co-founder Kim Gordon, who joined the gallery’s roster in 2015.


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