CLEARING, the New York–primarily based gallery recognized for championing artists like Marguerite Humeau, Korakrit Arunanondchai, and Harold Ancart, will shut its Manhattan and Los Angeles galleries.
In an Instagram post, founder Olivier Babin mentioned there was “no viable path ahead” for the enterprise. The closure ends the gallery’s 14-year run, which started in 2011 in Brooklyn.
CLEARING is the fourth main gallery to announce its closure prior to now month, following BLUM, Venus Over Manhattan, and Kasmin.. In an interview with The Art Newspaper, Babin mentioned the gallery was “crushed by the overheads,” pointing to rising prices for hire, transport, and artwork gala’s alongside declining revenues.
The gallery opened at a time when the Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn was residence to a vibrant community of arts areas, similar to Luhring Augustine’s undertaking house and Sign. The yr after it opened, the gallery expanded to Brussels. In its early years, it mounted exhibits for artists like Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Huma Bhabha, amongst a number of different luminaries. In recent times, the gallery made important strikes to broaden its presence, opening a location in Los Angeles in 2020 and shifting from Brooklyn to a three-story house within the Bowery in 2023.
In 2024, the gallery introduced a restructuring through which CLEARING would cut up its U.S. and European entities. The Brussels location is now operated independently by former CLEARING director Lodovico Corsini beneath his namesake.
Babin mentioned that CLEARING’s Bowery house, which got here with increased hire, coincided with a slowdown within the artwork market and proved financially unsustainable.
CLEARING’s ultimate exhibitions had been solo portray exhibits by Coco Young in New York and Henry Curchod in Los Angeles, each of which closed earlier this summer season. In June, the gallery staged “Maison Clearing,” a pop-up group exhibition in Basel that includes 46 artists.
“CLEARING was, firstly, a shared endeavor, and any success we encountered belongs to all of you,” Babin wrote. “Serving on the head of CLEARING has been the nice honor of my life.”
