Every week, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column of original scoops. If you have a tip, email Annie Armstrong at [email protected].

SIMMONS IS OUT

Almost three years have passed since New York dealers Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy, Amalia Dayan, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn announced that they were joining forces to create a gallery powerhouse they named LGDR. That ill-fated venture has provided a lot of fodder for this column over the years—and now it is offering up more.

But first, let me summarize how we got here in a few sentences. LGDR combined the programs of Lévy Gorvy, Luxembourg and Dayan, and Greenberg Rohatyn’s Salon 94 just as the city was recovering from the pandemic and questions loomed about the state of the economy. Not all the artists from all the galleries made it over to LGDR, though. Some who did not make the cut were, naturally, displeased, and some who did make the cut reported receiving little in the way of advance notice.

Anyhow, a grand new headquarters was unveiled on East 64th Street last April in the Upper East Side mansion that was once the Wildenstein Gallery. All seemed to be going well, for a bit, despite whispers about friction among the four high-power founders behind closed doors.

However, last August, the firm announced that it was losing its R, with Greenberg Rohatyn returning to Salon 94, which she founded in 2003. “I really wanted to continue the kind of work I’ve always done,” she told Artnet News at the time. “I am very experimental. I react quickly. I am very activist minded. All this is much harder to do when you have four people and you don’t have enough months in the year to do all the projects I am interested in doing.”

For the past six months, Rohatyn has been back at her East 89th Street space, pursuing those experimental, activist-minded projects, such as a show of sculptures by Myrtle Williams and a solo exhibition by the veteran Pictures Generation artist Laurie Simmons, plus a couple of projects in Miami and Paris by Kennedy Yanko. The Simmons show ended in January, and just a few weeks later, so did her representation with the gallery, Wet Paint can exclusively reveal.

Greenberg Rohatyn confirmed the news of Simmons’s departure over email, and added, “As context for Salon 94, we continue to be engaged in building great exhibitions and to work closely with legacy artists, as well as new ones.”

Simmons, who joined Salon 94 in 2009, declined to comment.

It was perhaps possible to see this coming. Though Simmons was part of Salon 94’s merger into LGDR, she apparently was not informed about the consolidation until the time the news broke, as my colleague Katya Kazakina reported at the time. (Right after calling Simmons to tell her, Greenberg Rohatyn informed one of the artist’s friends, Marilyn Minter, who remains with Salon 94.)

About a year into LGDR existence, Simmons asked for her name to be removed from its roster, but she began working with Greenberg Rohatyn again once she restarted Salon 94.

Where is Simmons headed next? After a prolific career showing at esteemed galleries like Sperone Westwater and the now-shuttered Metro Pictures and Mary Boone Gallery, it will be interesting to see where she lands.

THE DEMYSTIFIED CADY NOLAND SHOW GETS REMYSTIFIED

Some artists just love to keep their fans on their toes. Last week, I reported on the mysterious Cady Noland show out in Los Angeles at Theo Niarchos’s gallery Maison d’Arts, which caught plenty by surprise. It is mostly unclear who consigned the vintage works on display there (though I did connect a piece to painter David Salle), prices were only made available to a choice few, and even many art-world stalwarts had never previously heard of the space.

My column last week included several voices surmising that Noland is stepping out of seclusion more these days to shape how her work gets historicized. And many sources told me that they had heard that Noland had an active hand in staging this outing, as was the case with her show of new work at Gagosian in New York last summer.

However, I can report that is not the case. According to a representative who works with Noland at Gagosian, the artist was not contacted about the show in advance, did not give consent for it, and did not travel to Los Angeles to install it or see it. (Maison d’Arts has not replied to a request for comment.)

The situation recalls a disclaimer that dealer Chris D’Amelio hung in his Art Basel booth back in 2012: “This exhibition is not authorized or approved by the artist Cady Noland, nor was she consulted about it.”

WE HEAR 

My office view is consumed by the rooftop construction at Zero Bond. I’ll keep you guys updated with the features… can’t wait for the grand opening. Will be bringing my binoculars. pic.twitter.com/3HTj68yZrE

— Elena Saavedra Buckley (@elenasb_) March 20, 2024

Looks like my beloved Zero Bond is getting a rooftop extension, just in time for summer… Buzzy, Zwirner-backed literary mag The Drift apparently pays their full-time employees more than Buckingham Palace pays their communications officials, further proof that you get what you pay for… Artist/filmmaker Harmony Korine‘s design collective EDGLRD has announced that it will be touring the globe, and anyone who made it to its show in Miami would tell you to grab tickets quick… The Performance Space gala was apparently disrupted by a team of artists passing around issues of a satirical “New York Roast”, which prominently featured collector Scott Lorinsky on its front cover with the headline “Scott ‘Run ‘em Over’ Lorinsky’: Will Galleries Choose Scott Over Their Artists?” (Lorinsky stepped down from two board roles last month, after he was allegedly videotaped telling vehicles to ram through a crowd of protesters at a pro-Palestine rally)… Speaking of which, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst have an extension of their AI artwork from the Whitney Biennial on the museum’s website, which creates bespoke AI imagery of user-written prompts, but when you type in “Free Palestine”, the site generates images of “free birds” or “free kittens”… 

PARTY OF THE WEEK

The pre-afterparty dinner for Jamian Juliano-Villani at Indochine. Photo by Rose King.

If you were not at the afterparty for Jamian Juliano-Villani’s first exhibition at Gagosian on Saturday night in New York, then where the hell even were you? I was visiting family down in Texas, but my FOMO for the late-night affair at the artist’s East Village gallery O’Flaherty’s—following Gagosian’s celebratory dinner nearby at Indochine—was potent enough for me to ask around about what I missed.

“It’s the most fun I’ve had in New York since before Trump was elected,” James Cardoso-Schaffer, the brain behind Chinatown’s GEMS told me. “Matt Dillon said he really liked me, which was a good moment.”

“The O’Flaherty’s afterparty ruled because it was essentially a house party within a house party, due to the Donna Dennis installation,” mused Hypebeast’s deputy editor Zach Sokol about the uncanny sculptures by the veteran artist in the gallery. “Plus, you could smoke inside!”

According to artist Borna Sammak, “It was a dark, very fun party that spilled onto the street, classic New York.” He continued, “Orlando Estrada was DJing flawlessly off YouTube, and even though no one could hear it, they could all feel it.” He concluded, “Everyone was high energy. I’d like to apologize for my behavior that night, but I won’t.” (Been there, buddy!)

Publicist and it-girl Kaitlin Phillips told me, “Jamian’s the last art star!!!”

Who could argue? See you next week.