After almost three decades, Andrea Rosen will close her New York gallery space on West 24th Street.
She’s taking the drastic move in order to consolidate her focus to the estate of Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
In a statement sent yesterday, Rosen explained her motivation to change gears, and expressed her sadness about veering off a course she had followed for 27 years.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (USA Today) (1990). Candies individually wrapped in red, silver, and blue cellophane, endless supply. Installation view of “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form,” Museum Für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany, 2011. © The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York.
“I have come to realize that in order for me to be fearlessly open and responsive to our times and the future, [it] requires mobility, flexibility and the willingness to change, and consequently, I have decided to shift my life, and the focus of the gallery, in a significant way,” she wrote.
Rosen will no longer represent living artists, but will continue to work significantly with the estate of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, the artist whose work inaugurated the gallery in 1990, and with whom she worked personally until his death in 1996. Today, she is executor of the estate, and president of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation Fellows Forum, a group founded in 2008. Andrea Rosen Gallery will now co-represent the estate with David Zwirner Gallery.
“I approached David to co-represent Felix, as Zwirner Gallery is the obvious choice, as I very much respect the rigor of David’s program and his gallery’s focus on the holistic representation of artists.”
Her future involvement with the rest of the artists she represents, from Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin to Andrea Zittel, remains unclear.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (1991), part of the artist’s Billboard Project as seen at Artpace Foundation, San Antonio (2010). Photo: Tom DuBrock, © the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery.
“While the gallery will continue to exist, with selective activities, like the representation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, I will no longer have a typical permanent public space and therefore no longer represent living artists. This transition will transpire over the next few months.”
Rosen is conspicuously vague about to where, exactly, her energy will be transitioned, but she explains in her statement that the gallery has consumed her life, and that now, some paring down is in order, perhaps in order to focus on parenting her teenage daughter.
“I have always felt that being open to the public and supporting artists was the perfect conduit for everything I care about. Yet I realized that the only way to be truly available and in order to set an example for my daughter of what it means to try to be an active, kind and connected citizen, or to try and live without ethical compromise requires time and the simplification of my life.”
artnet News has reached out to the gallery to inquire about plans for other estates represented by the gallery, such as the Estate of Alina Szapocznikow, but has not received a reply at the time of publishing.