Tanya Bonakdar Gallery will close its Los Angeles outpost seven years after opening on Highland Avenue. It is the latest in a string of commercial galleries that have announced they are closing a space this summer as the art market continues to contract. A representative for the gallery says the space will close in September.
“The lease’s end offered a natural pause to assess, and celebrate, all we have accomplished with the Los Angeles gallery exhibition programme,” a gallery spokesperson said in a statement. Artnet News first reported the upcoming closure.
Tanya Bonakdar opened in Los Angeles in 2018 amid a new Gold Rush of New York dealers setting up spaces in Southern California. At the time, Bonakdar told The Art Newspaper the gallery made the move at the request of artists on her roster. Since opening up shop in New York in 1994, the gallery "worked with so many artists who had no representation in America, and over the years have become more and more interested in showing in Los Angeles", Bonakdar said at the time.
Since the space’s first show, dedicated to the sculptor Charles Long, the gallery has staged exhibitions for artists including Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saraceno, Laura Lima and Susan Philipsz.
“With that foundation now firmly in place, and with a full slate of exhibitions continuing in New York and internationally, the gallery will continue to support its artists’ work in Los Angeles, throughout the West Coast, and beyond,” the gallery's spokesperson added. “Tanya Bonakdar Gallery remains deeply committed to Los Angeles and its vibrant community of artists, collectors and institutions.”
News of the closure of Tanya Bonakdar’s California outpost follows a number of other high-profile gallery shutdowns from New York to Los Angeles. Clearing, which had locations in both cities, announced it would close entirely two weeks ago. Blum, a Los Angeles mainstay for decades, said in July the gallery would phase out traditional operations. New York galleries shutting down include Kasmin (in order to transition to a new venture called Olney Gleason, led by the former’s executive leadership) and Venus Over Manhattan.
