When Hunter Biden’s name was on everyone’s lips during the impeachment proceedings of outgoing president Donald Trump, what was keeping him sane, he told the New York Times in February, was his newfound painting hobby.
Now, the art of president-elect Joe Biden’s son will go on show at New York’s Georges Bergès Gallery next year, according to the New York Post’s Page Six. Operating in Soho as well as Berlin, Bergès’s website says it offers works by “a dazzling blend of consequential living artists,” including actor Sylvester Stallone. Last year, art historian Donald Kuspit curated the exhibition “The Feminine Sublime: The Abstract Paintings of Seven Women Artists” at the gallery.
The gallery did not respond to requests to confirm the news, nor did Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires.
Biden has no professional training as an artist, having worked as a lawyer, lobbyist, and head of private equity firms, according to the Times, which also notes that video producer Lanette Phillips, who has worked with filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Darren Aronofsky, tried but failed to find Biden a gallery.
Biden often works in alcohol ink that he blows with a straw on Japanese Yupo paper, creating abstractions recall patterns from nature.
Three critics were of mixed minds about Biden’s work, speaking to Artnet News in February, but overall were skeptical. Jerry Saltz described the paintings as “generic Post Zombie Formalism illustration”; Scott Indrisek said they looked “[as] if Fred Tomaselli started making art for dermatologists’ waiting rooms”; and Artnet News’s own Ben Davis opined that “as digital images, at least, they are pleasing,” but added that “it’s hard to say what they look like without seeing how the actual paper holds the ink. You can’t really judge it from your desktop.”