New York’s Jeffrey Deitch apologized to artist Miles Greenberg after an ascendant pop star staged an event at the gallery that appeared to draw upon a performance staged in the same location in 2021.
The musician, Lexa Gates, promoted her new album by walking for hours inside a giant wheel at Jeffrey Deitch on January 14. Titled The Wheel, Gates’s performance was meant to “reinforce the message of persistence, emotional resilience and forward motion that acts as the central theme of the record,” according to the event’s official description. Her related album, I Am, has received coverage from such outlets as Pitchfork, which gave it a score of 5.5 out of 10.
On a post by Gates promoting the event, Greenberg noted that The Wheel seemed akin to his own performance Oysterknife, for which the artist walked for nearly an entire day straight on a conveyor belt while a digital clock marked time. When Oysterknife debuted at the Marina Abramović Institute in 2020, the performance was briefly halted when Greenberg lost consciousness.
The next year, a version of the piece, this one with video footage of Greenberg instead of the artist himself, was restaged at Jeffrey Deitch.
Greenberg has also described Oysterknife as a work about persistence. “Endurance work, at a certain point, necessarily involves a degree of spectacle around bodily deterioration,” he said in 2021. “I feel my body being consumed every day. I’m within my comfort zone so long as I have agency over the poetics of that consumption.”
Miles Greenberg’s Oysterknife was staged in the same location as Lexa Gates’s performance five years earlier.
Courtesy the artist and Jeffrey Deitch
“That’s really egregious and disappointing, especially from the gallery,” Greenberg wrote six days ago on Gates’s Instagram, noting what he called “uncanny” similarities to his work. “Credit where credit’s due…it could not be more blatant.”
In response, Gates wrote back, “Never seen it but that’s cool and I’m happy for you + your body is tea.”
Greenberger replied by writing, “for all i know you actually didn’t know better, and frankly the dates keep the score, so wtv.” (He also said, “but anyway ur body’s tea too, thanks for the homage and best of luck to u sis.”) But Greenberg also wrote that Jeffrey Deitch “sure as hell did know better” and tagged the gallery.
Jeffrey Deitch did not officially respond to Greenberg last night, when it issued an apology. “The gallery acknowledges that, though not part of our programming, an unauthorized derivative of Greenberg’s work took place within its walls without the artist’s knowledge or consent,” the gallery wrote on Tuesday.
“No harm no foul,” Greenberg wrote on his story today. “No tea no shade.”
Gates did not immediately respond to ARTnews’s request for additional comment.
