Every week, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column of original scoops. If you have a tip, email Annie Armstrong at aarmstrong@artnet.com.
HOW SWIVEL GALLERY IS TURNING HEADS
When the art market comes up in conversations these days, a certain somber tone, a sense of muted indignation, tends to emerge. That was very much the tenor of Swivel Gallery founder Graham Wilson’s recent post on Instagram, which began ominously: “im going to provide a precursor to something that will come out in the next days. The past six months have potentially been some of the hardest of my entire life…”
But it was a bait-and-switch. Instead of announcing another gallery closure, Wilson went on to reveal that he is preparing to relocate Swivel to a 2,000 square-foot space in Manhattan’s Hudson Square neighborhood, a world away from its old home in Bushwick. The move “represents a momentous step forward in the gallery’s trajectory,” he said in a later post.
I was one of many who felt a bit duped. “Yeah,” Wilson grinned over lunch this week at a Westville branch near the new space. “I stirred the pot a little bit.”
Wilson is 36 years old, has enough tattoos to make a sailor envious, and delivers Southern idioms through the thick molasses of a Kentucky drawl. “We had to make some lemonade,” he told me of his gallery’s current situation. Swivel departed Brooklyn this summer, but since the new space it not yet ready, it’s been operating out of a temporary address on Hudson Street, a block over from its future home on Greenwich. It has an eerie Amy Bravo show on view now.
The new spot opens on October 26 with a group show titled “Myriad,” featuring Swivel’s entire program. (Around the same time, the Italian restaurant Lilia, a Williamsburg hotspot, is opening a new location in the same building.)
In winter of 2023, Swivel moved from a tiny storefront in Bed-Stuy to Bushwick, setting up in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse previously occupied by Clearing, where Wilson typically ran three shows at a time. “It was mind-boggling,” he said. “The new space is a welcome opportunity to become a bit more focused.”
A high school drop-out, Wilson moved to New York from Louisville when he was 19 and scored a gig art-handling for Hauser and Wirth. (“They just needed rough, tough young people to toss shit around.”) He made art of his own on the side. His boss at the time, Anna Erickson, picked up on his intense work ethic and took him under her wing. “He is really a devoted person no matter what he’s doing,” she told me by phone. “That was true when he was an art handler, and when he was an artist.”
Erickson gave Wilson an early show at a project space she had in Dumbo, which sold out, establishing him as an emerging artist. Along the way, he befriended Kennedy Yanko, who has experienced her own meteoric rise. “Graham, regardless of what he wants to say and how we wants to say it, is an amazing artist,” Yanko told me. “When I met him he was doing these amazing installations, and his whole practice was very energetic and ferocious.”
Regardless, Wilson had his doubts. “There were always going to be 10 or 20 artists who were better than me,” he said. “I didn’t really like the gallery system and I didn’t like being an artist, to be honest.”
By the time the pandemic began, he was working as an installation manager at Phillips, and, like so many others, was forced to reckon with the question of what he was doing with his life. “I was at home and I was just like, ‘What is this all for?’ So I just quit and said, ‘Fuck it. I’m going to open a gallery of my own.'”
Wilson’s former life as an artist gives him an edge as a dealer, Erickson said. “He’s been in these people’s shoes, and he takes everything so seriously. He’s full of fire.”
Swivel has come a long way very quickly. It began in 2020 in an 850-square-foot shoebox space on Nostrand Avenue with money that Wilson saved up making deliveries during the pandemic—for “a service,” he explained with a wink. Artists like Kiah Celeste, Utē Petit, Ivana Štulić, and John Denniston II all had their first shows there. Wilson worked alone, and developed a reputation for supporting ambitious, immersive work with an outsider sensibility.
Four years later, he has a staff of four and a space upstate in Saugerties, he has done international fairs, and he has become a reliable scout for new talent. (He calls himself a “golden boy” of NADA Miami because of how often his booth gets selected for “Best Of” roundups.)
Wilson said that he has been successful because develop new artists’ markets, as well as new collectors. “I never played this game of, ‘Are you good enough to buy from me?’” he said. “That’s how a lot of people shot themselves in the foot. They got reliant on a very small group of people. How I see it, there’s literally thousands of new millionaires out there.”
As it happens, Swivel’s new location is the basement of an office used by several venture capital firms. (Wilson flashed a fox-in-the-henhouse look when I asked if that helped him decide on taking the lease.)
When the new space opens, Swivel’s roster will start to grow, Wilson said, since artists represented elsewhere have been knocking on his door. “Artists want to be in a conversation with other good artists,” he said. “And they don’t want to show somewhere that’s just showing, like, flower paintings and stuff.”
WE HEAR
I’d like to shout out Glenn Ligon, who keeps it so real on Instagram… Gladstone Gallery has a fantastic new David Salle exhibition at its West 24th Street location called “New Pastorals” with paintings that integrate AI, and it celebrated with a late-night dinner at Indochine, where writers Ben Lerner and Emma Cline mingled with legendary artists like Alex Katz, Julian Schnabel, Carroll Dunham, and Joan Jonas… There is a certain poetry to the fact that my old friend, New York Mayor Eric Adams, was at the Met right before being indicted… Henry Taylor seems to be hiring a new assistant, and the job posting says that responsibilities include “coordinating amusement park tickets,” and “securing DJs”… Adding to the trend of artist-run restaurants I mentioned last week, Damien Hirst will be hosting the dining concept Pario London at his Newport Street Gallery during Frieze London…. Film distributor Oscilloscope is set to re-release Gagosian artist Bennett Miller’s masterful 1998 documentary about tour bus driver Speed Levitch (and my personal favorite movie about New York) The Cruise… My inbox is just flooded with collaborations between artists and brands right now—Daniel Arsham x Kohler! José Parlá x Warby Parker! But by far the most alluring is Nan Goldin’s campaign with Gucci… Speaking of cool photography campaigns, Jon Rafman’s use of AI for these portraits of Downtown-film-scene sibling act Peter Vack and Betsey Brown for Sex Magazine feels oddly refreshing…
GRIEVANCES
Main Street USA. (Photo by: Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
In case you missed my call-to-action last week: Each edition of Wet Paint will now conclude with a section called “Grievances,” a very short note from an arts professional (named or anonymous) about something in our industry that grinds their gears. This week’s contribution comes from an art dealer who asked to remain anonymous. Here is their Grievance:
When will galleries stop trying to be cool by naming themselves after their address? It’s been done—many, many times. And then you have to move, and it confuses everyone. No wonder collectors are buying less from you. They can’t find your fucking gallery. And it shows you haven’t thought through things past the end of your lease. So much for a 30-year career. It’s not neutral, it’s not cool, it’s just stupid. Please at least make up a fictional character, or find some obscure French crockery to name yourself after.
What has been bothering you? Send your contribution to me at aarmstrong@artnet.com with the subject line “GRIEVANCES.”