Dealer Gordon VeneKlasen has released new details about his plans after separating from Michael Werner Gallery. After running Werner’s New York space for more than 30 years, VeneKlasen will take over that location, as well as Werner’s London space, under his own eponymous gallery, and promote two longtime employees to partners. As part of the agreement, the short-lived Los Angeles branch of Michael Werner Gallery will close.
Justine Birbil, who oversaw global operations at Werner, and Kadee Robbins, who headed up Werner in London, have both been made partners at VeneKlasen. New York–based Birbil began working with VeneKlasen in 1988, when he was a director at Curt Marcus Gallery; he hired her at Michael Werner in 1993. Robbins, who joined Michael Werner in 2003, has overseen the London gallery since its opening in 2012, and will have the same position at VeneKlasen.
As part of the separation between Werner and Veneklasen, Micheal Werner gallery’s Los Angeles space, opened two years ago in a former nail salon off Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, will shutter. Director Nicole Caruso will relocate to London to work with VeneKlasen gallery there.
VeneKlasen said his gallery “will be focusing really hard on New York and London,” adding that “starting a new gallery [would be] hard to do with three spaces. I love the [LA] space, and it was a great joy to design. We did wonderful shows there, and the artist community was incredibly supportive.”
As previously reported in ARTnews, VeneKlasen will continue to represent artists he brought to Werner, including Hurvin Anderson, Sanya Kantarovsky, Florian Krewer, Peter Saul, and Issy Wood. He said a change in the program “will be apparent within the next year, in terms of me adding artists that wouldn’t necessarily have been in the program before,” noting that he anticipates adding artists with a more conceptual bent.
VeneKlasen Gallery will participate in its first art fair next week at the inaugural Art Basel Qatar, with a solo presentation of paintings by Issy Wood. In New York, the gallery will debut with an exhibition of Sigmar Polke’s four-painting cycle The Dream of Menelaus, opening February 19; a Polke exhibition will open at the London gallery on March 3.
