An established platform for artists operating with an international mindset, Jane Lombard Gallery was founded in SoHo in 1995 as Lombard Freid Projects. Supporting a range of emerging and mid-career practices in many media, the gallery’s programming emphasises artists whose works display a socio-political awareness of the world. These artists have received international acclaim, acquiring many awards and participating regularly in numerous biennials; in the recent past roster artist Squeak Carnwath was named recipient of the Lee Krasner Award for a lifetime of artistic achievement (2019), and earlier (2017) Michael Rakowitz was selected for the prestigious Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth Commission.
Read MoreAfter a brief hiatus, Jane Lombard Gallery reopened in 2015 and continues today to present a consistently high-calibre range of practices from its Chelsea gallery space and via art fairs further afield.
Jane Lombard Gallery Artists
Jane Lombard Gallery represents 17 artists of local, national, and international origins, including well-known names such as Lee Mingwei, whose social practice has earned him world-wide acclaim. Lee’s interactive works in which the viewer is co-creator of the experience often focus of forming a level of intimacy between strangers; in The Mending Project (2009), for example, a docent or the artist himself occupies the gallery space, mending clothing the viewer brings while they talk.
Jane Lombard Gallery’s artists represent a range of disciplines, most engaging with more than one media on a regular basis. In Carmen Neely’s practice, for example, explorations of her identity as a young black female artist take shape in both gestural abstract paintings and found objects. Two collaborative practices are also included on the gallery roster: Lucy + Jorge Orta, who have been collaborating since 1991, call on a variety of media to address a range of social and ecological concerns; while Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens’ complex practice also calls upon a range of materials in order to consider the way frameworks can translate across languages, and the degree of success such translations may or may not hold.
Art fairs and exhibitions
In 2015, Jane Lombard Gallery introduced its new name to the world with Sarah Dwyer’s Sunk Under (14 May–27 June 2015). In this solo exhibition, Dwyer presented nine paintings inspired by the Seamus Heaney poem Bogland, which compares the swampy Irish landscape of his childhood to the wide open prairies of the southwestern United States. More recently the gallery has held solo exhibitions by other gallery artists including Teppei Kaneuji (Plastic Barricade, 2019) and Carnwath (Not All Black and White, 2019).
A recent group exhibition of both roster and affiliated artists, Speaking Power to (Post) Truth was curated by Sarah Raza and featured works by Ergin Çavuşoǧlu, James Clar, Mounir Fatmi, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, and Shahpour Pouyan. Though diverse in their approach, each artist exhibited uses their practice to interrogate human consciousness and truth or post-truth from a range of angles including history, the literary world, and politics.
In addition to its internal programming, Jane Lombard Gallery participates in a range of art fairs throughout North America, including Dallas Art Fair; Seattle Art Fair; EXPO CHICAGO; and The Armory Show, New York.
Ocula Report Lyon Biennale 2019: The Art of Dispersal By Tessa Moldan, Lyon 'The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.' This excerpt from a poem by American writer Raymond Carver is the somewhat florid departure for Là où les eaux se mêlent, the 15th Lyon Biennale (18 September 2019–5 January 2019)—a materially rich exhibition of works by around 50...
Ocula Insight Howard Bilton, founder and chairman of the Sovereign Art Foundation, Hong Kong By Ocula Editors Yorkshire-born businessman Howard Bilton is the founder and chairman of the Sovereign Art Foundation, established in Hong Kong in 2003. The Foundation focuses on both recognising the abundance of artistic talent in Asia and bringing the benefits of art therapy and education to underprivileged children. In both endeavours, the Foundation...
Ocula Report New York Arts Week: Five Exhibitions Not to Miss By Brienne Walsh, New York There are few cities in the world like New York for viewing art. If you are in town for the Armory Show, or the ADAA’s Art Show, or the plethora of other art fairs on during New York Arts Week (29 February to 7 March), then you should definitely make sure you see the big shows, such as Laura Poitras at the Whitney Museum of American Art...
Ocula Conversation Lee Mingwei By Iona Whittaker, New York I think I'm one of the rare artists in the area of relational aesthetics who asks for the production of the museum as a structure for my work.
Related Press Nam June Paik today 18 October 2019, ArtReview Koki Tanaka How did you first encounter the work of Nam June Paik? I think it was through TV Buddha, but not sure which one. I just googled it now, and find out there are so many different versions of TV Buddhas by Paik...
Related Press MICHAEL RAKOWITZ WINS $100,000 NASHER PRIZE 4 September 2019, ARTFORUM Michael Rakowitz, the Chicago-based, Iraqi-American artist known for producing powerful works that often address complicated histories and events, such as the death of Tamir Rice—the twelve-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer in 2014—and ISIS's systematic campaign to destroy cultural heritage, has been named...
Related Press Making up for the past – the artists filling in the blanks in our collective memory 20 July 2019, Apollo Magazine In the first week of June, Britain and France played host to a vast spectacle on the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The commemoration events, tracing the timetable of the Normandy landings as they unfolded three quarters of a century earlier, marshalled a range of techniques, ancient and modern, to mark the occasion: church services, parades...
Related Press What Happens When Artists Run Restaurants? 5 July 2019, Frieze Last month, a new sake bar opened at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts: a softly lit tunnel of booze that promises the kind of entrancing conversation one can never quite remember the next morning. A permanent installation designed by the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2019 (the form of the flower is unknown to the seed) is furnished...
Related Video & Audio ASIA NOW 2018 || Teppei Kaneuji (artist) & Reiko Tsubaki (Curator at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo) 1 November 2018, ASIA NOW The artist Teppei Kaneuji and Reiko Tsubaki, Curator at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, discuss the artist's recent sculptures and performances. Kaneuji investigates the mass consumption of contemporary Japanese culture, sourcing materials from everyday life, found objects and manga characters to create sculptures that are at once playful and...
Related Video & Audio Lee Mingwei explores impermanence through 'Guernica in Sand' 17 June 2016, Art Radar Journal Guernica in Sand is a recreation of Picasso’s famous painting Guernica (1937) through the medium of sand. The public is then invited to engage with the work by walking on it, in a painstaking performance that Lee says is “about transformation”: "I’m going to finish the last part of the sand painting, while one...
