The New Wave of Artist-Led Bars

Last week, Pace Gallery Berlin opened a functioning replica of the bar German artist Friedrich Kunath built in his studio in Los Angeles, titled Bar Va Bene (2026). The bar, which will serve glasses of white Burgundy and negronis to the public from Thursday to Sunday, is the centrepiece of a new group exhibition, Goodbye Sadness, Hello Sadness. 

The exhibition revolves around the night as a place of possibility. The phrase “Goodbye Sadness/Hello Sadness” appears in neon above either end of the bar and, elsewhere, visitors can see Elmgreen & Dragset’s sculpture But I’m on The Guest List (2007–2015), which comprises a door marked “VIP” that leads nowhere, and Flash! (2025), a huge disco ball by Esben Weile Kjaer. The title of the show is a reference to Bonjour Tristesse, a novel by the 20th-century French writer Françoise Sagan, which tells the story of a young woman living with her widowed father over one summer, during which time he decides to remarry.  

Bar Va Bene is not the first artist bar to have opened in recent months. At Basel Social Club’s fifth edition in June, held in a disused UBS building with the theme “Office”, British artist Nick Doyle’s installation Human Resources became one of the fair’s chief talking points. The futuristic kink bar, presented by Brussels gallery Stems, was built from repurposed cubicle walls and suspended ceiling panels, and featured bar stools, filing cabinets and fetish objects with a spinning prize wheel, which, when spun, instructed visitors as to what they should drink: “blood”, “sweat” or “tears”. And how: one option included being fed a drink from a Louboutin shoe, with your head locked into the bar. 

In New York City, former Zombie-formalist artist Lucien Smith has re-opened Food, the cult, artist-run canteen and restaurant which American artists Carol Goodden, Tina Girouard and Gordon Matta-Clark opened in 1971. The new iteration focuses on providing employment opportunities to young artists. An experimental menu varies week to week but has so far included “Cheese of the Day” and “Dirt and Worms”. 

In London, painter Peter Doig has turned his old working space over to hospitality. Tramps, the low-key restaurant and bar found off the Old Street end of City Road, occupies the artist’s former studio and was established by his partner, the Iranian art dealer and curator Parinaz Mogadassi. It features artwork by Doig, who is often there, changing the records on the record player and lunching. The menu has featured dry gin martinis, gildas, charcuterie, salads and “chum”, a sweet dumpling dish from Trinidad. Doig and Mogadassi have also taken over McGlynn’s, an Irish pub in King’s Cross. —[O]