Eli Klein Gallery was first established in 2007 in SoHo, New York, with an aim to introduce the works of emerging and prominent Asian contemporary artists to the West.
Read MoreNow located at 398 West Street, with a spacious exhibition and area spanning three floors, Eli Klein Gallery is a leading force, promoting contemporary Asian art and offering challenging and original exhibitions. With a concern for fostering cross-cultural awareness, Eli Klein Gallery also encourages new critical discourses on Asia and contemporary Asian art through publications and collaboration with artists and international museums.
In its early years, Eli Klein Gallery garnered acclaim for exhibiting works of Asian contemporary artists in the United States, notably Cui Xiuwen’s experimental pursuit of the self and human sexuality in her photographs; Zhang Dali’s confrontational graffiti, sculpture, and painting; and Liu Bolin’s performance works exploring life in contemporary Asia.
Eli Klein Gallery also represents contemporary Asian artists with an eclectic range of interests, from Zheng Guogu’s, Chow Chun Fai’s, and Ye Funa’s politically charged works to Li Hongbo’s intricate and kinetic paper sculptures and Cai Dongdong’s dada-infused nostalgic photo-sculptures.
With a reputation for its fresh, discerning spirit, Eli Klein Gallery was the first to organize solo exhibitions of Asian artists in the United States, such as Geng Xue, Jiang Pengyi, Li Hongbo, Liu Bolin, Shen Shaomin among many others. In 2019, the gallery presented Photoworks 1993–2016 “Even a click of the shutter is unnecessary”, the first-ever retrospective exhibition of Zheng Guogu’s influential and dynamic bodies of works surrounding the concept of photography.
One of Eli Klein Gallery’s first group exhibitions was China Now: Lost in Transition (2007): a survey of works by contemporary Chinese artists with a focus on photography. The gallery continues to examine the diverse aspects of contemporary Asian art through group presentations such as Becoming - Experimental Video Works (2019), which brought together the work of eight female artists engaging with the impact of cultural, economic, and social changes on individuals, and Force Majeure (2020), showcasing the works from the past decade of 13 Asian artists of international repute.
