Two artists have sued Manhattan art gallery The Hole, alleging roughly $50,000 in unpaid proceeds from sales of their artwork.
In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on July 16, artists Daniel Um and Nastaran Shahbazi say they provided multiple paintings and other artworks to The Hole for display and sale on consignment between 2024 and 2026. The artists allege that, despite receiving partial payments, they are still owed a combined total of nearly $50,000—$28,975 to Um and $21,000 to Shahbazi.
According to the filing, when Um and Shahbazi sought payment from the gallery, they were told the business was financially strained and could not issue payments at that time. New York law requires consignment proceeds to remain the artist’s property and prohibits galleries from using those funds for operating expenses. Artists’ payments cannot be contingent on a gallery’s other income, as Um and Shahbazi allege happened at The Hole.
“[The Hole] did exactly what the statute forbids,” Um and Shahbazi’s suit alleges, claiming that the gallery sold their consigned artworks, collected the proceeds, and “instead of segregating and remitting those trust funds,” used the money for rent, operating expenses, other creditors, and other artists, leaving the plaintiffs unpaid for more than a year.
According to the lawsuit, the artists agreed to pay The Hole a commission on sales of their work but did not agree to surrender nearly $50,000 in proceeds. The artists accuse the gallery of unjust enrichment, breach of contract, and violations of New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law.
Um and Shahbazi’s suit contends that The Hole’s management repeatedly assured them that the outstanding payments would be made, telling them they would “never not pay.”
ARTnews has contacted The Hole and the artists for comment. Jeff Kinkle of Kinkle Law, the artists’ attorney, told ARTnews that the pair believed the lawsuit “spoke for itself.”
The Hole was founded in 2010 by Kathy Grayson, a former director at Deitch Projects, in Manhattan’s Bowery neighborhood. Grayson opened a second New York location in Tribeca in 2021, followed a year later by a large West Hollywood space, amid a wave of East Coast galleries expanding into Los Angeles. But a market contraction in 2023 reportedly hit the gallery hard, leaving it struggling to pay artists, workers, and rent.
The Los Angeles space was shuttered, while court records show financial troubles in New York as well: Landlords for The Hole’s Bowery and Tribeca properties filed nonpayment complaints against the gallery’s New York entities in summer 2025.
Court filings allege that The Hole’s Tribeca location accrued more than $120,000 in unpaid rent and unresolved real estate taxes over three years. A separate 2025 filing involving the Bowery location alleges more than $60,000 in unpaid rent and other charges under a lease agreement that runs through January 2031.
Grayson told the Art Newspaper in April that “we are current with Bowery rent and paying off arrears for the Tribeca space, slowly but surely.” Artists interviewed for the story, meanwhile, described longstanding issues with consignment and transparency at the gallery’s New York locations. One artist who participated in a 2024 group exhibition at the Bowery location said a work had been sold at an unauthorized discount and that proceeds were paid more than a year after the sale, in several installments—both claims the gallery confirmed.
In a Reddit thread posted to r/ContemporaryArt in April, users claiming to be artists warned others against working with the gallery, alleging that they had not received proceeds from sales of their artwork, and had discovered that one of their works had been sold only after seeing “Instagram pics” of it “in a collector’s home.”
