White Cube is pleased to announce the opening of its first permanent New York gallery and its inaugural exhibition Chopped & Screwed, on view October 3 – 28, 2023. White Cube New York is located on the Upper East Side at 1002 Madison Avenue between 77th and 78th and is housed in a landmark building and former bank built for the Fulton Trust Company in 1930. Retaining many of its original exterior features, including a large flagpole and stone bust of the bank’s founder Robert Fulton on the top of the building, the interior has been fully renovated to accommodate three levels of exhibition space and private viewing rooms spanning over 8,000 square feet.
The inaugural exhibition, Chopped & Screwed, is curated by Courtney Willis Blair (Senior Director, US), and considers the use of sourcing and distortion in contemporary art to resist established systems of power and value.
The exhibition’s title makes oblique reference to the technique of the same name, popularised by the late Houston musician DJ Screw in the early 1990s. The selection of artists for the show apply similar approaches to medium, form and aesthetic inheritances, each challenging, undermining or malforming existing hegemonic conditions and prevailing narratives.
Bringing together a group of artists exemplary of the gallery’s global network from both inside and beyond the roster, the exhibition includes works by David Altmejd, Michael Armitage, Georg Baselitz, Mark Bradford, Theaster Gates, General Idea, Robert Gober, Philip Guston, David Hammons, Mona Hatoum, Christian Marclay, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Julie Mehretu, Adrian Piper, Pope.L, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Carol Rama, Ilana Savdie, and Danh Vo.
With a focus on authoritarian governance, patriarchy and religion, the artists interrogate the power inherent to archetypes, whether material, structural or symbolic. It is a deliberate application of clandestine methods, both subtle and exacting, to establish new visual language. Often starting from familiar motifs and objects, the use of sampling becomes a transgressive act that implicates the conflicts of contemporary life. In turn, their reconfigurations constitute alternative readings to both conditions of power and realities of living.
Following the inaugural exhibition, the gallery will present new paintings by Tracey Emin in a solo presentation titled Lovers Grave on view November 4, 2023 – January 13, 2024, the artist’s first solo show in New York in 7 years. In 2024, the gallery will present solo exhibitions of work by Theaster Gates opening January 31, followed by Etel Adnan, and Antony Gormley in the spring.
