Sean Kelly Gallery

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Sean Kelly Gallery

A contemporary art gallery founded in 1991 with locations in New York City and Los Angeles. Contemporary Art Gallery in New York and Los Angeles.

Since its inception in 1991, Sean Kelly Gallery has been internationally regarded for its diverse, intellectually driven program and a highly regarded roster of artists. The gallery has garnered international attention for its high caliber exhibition program and collaboration with many of the most significant cultural institutions around the world. The gallery opened its first public space at 43 M

ercer Street. During these formative years, it established a reputation for diverse, intellectually driven, unconventional exhibitions. The original list of artists represented; Marina Abramović, James Casebere, Callum Innes, Joseph Kosuth and Julião Sarmento (1948-2021), all of whom are still represented by the gallery today, exemplified the Gallery’s commitment to presenting important and challenging contemporary art. In 2001, Sean Kelly moved to a converted 7,000 square-foot industrial space on 29th Street in the Chelsea gallery district. The spacious location enabled the Gallery to mount increasingly ambitious, museum-quality exhibitions to great critical acclaim. The Gallery’s roster of artists expanded to include Rebecca Horn, Frank Thiel, Laurent Grasso, Peter Liversidge, Anthony McCall, Alec Soth, and Kehinde Wiley. In October 2012, Sean Kelly opened its current 22,000 square foot space at 475 Tenth Avenue in a historic 1914 building. With the gallery’s expansion into the new space, Sean Kelly added internationally acclaimed artists to its roster; David Claerbout, José Dávila, Candida Höfer, Ilse D’Hollander, Idris Khan, Hugo McCloud, Mariko Mori, Liu Wei, and Sun Xun. Sean Kelly has continued to expand its program to include a new generation of exceptional contemporary artists such as Dawoud Bey, Julian Charrière, Landon Metz, Sam Moyer, Shahzia Sikander, Janaina Tschäpe and Wu Chi-Tsung. Over the course of more than thirty years, the Gallery has become a symbol for high quality, thought-provoking contemporary art and conversation, most recently with the launch of Collect Wisely in May 2018. Collect Wisely is a provocative media campaign designed to encourage lively conversation around topics of collecting and connoisseurship. At the heart of this initiative is the Collect Wisely podcast, a series of interviews in which Sean Kelly discusses with collectors their passion for art, artists, and a passion for collecting and connoisseurship. On September 17, 2022, the Gallery opened a major new space in Los Angeles.

05/29/2026

Wishing Ana González a very Happy Birthday! 🎂🎊🥳

Drawing on ethnographic understandings of forests and waterways as sacred territories of abundance and renewal, González physically unravels the fabric of each work from the bottom up, thread by thread. This act of deconstruction becomes a powerful metaphor for the slow unweaving of nature under increasing human pressure.

The iconic green tones, evoke both vegetation and currency, underscoring the tension between economic exploitation and the sacred value of life, echoing Alexander von Humboldt’s assertion that nature exists as an interconnected fabric, vulnerable to disruption at every point.

Images: Ana González, TEQUENDAMA, 2025, sublimation printing on roughened tarp, 236 1/4 x 59 1/16 inches; Installation view of Ana González: RÍO at Sean Kelly, New York, February 27 – April 11, 2026, Photography: Jason Wyche, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

05/28/2026

We are pleased to announce that Lindsay Adams’s SOIL, has been extended through June 6 at Sean Kelly, New York.

This new body of work delves into Adams’s ongoing investigation into how paintings can emerge from a black ground, using darkness, not as absence, but as a generative foundation from which color, gesture, and form unfold.

At the center of this exhibition is Adams’s sustained exploration of color and how it can expand and redefine space. Adams approaches color as a living, shifting material that is built, disrupted, and reimagined through process rather than predetermined meaning. She uses Lamp Black as both a material and conceptual starting point. Rather than functioning solely as ground, black operates as a threshold of visibility.

Images: Lindsay Adams, Chocolate City’s Heartbeat, 2026, oil, oil pastel, and oil stick on canvas, 48 x 48 inches; Installation view of Lindsay Adams: SOIL at Sean Kelly, New York, April 17 – May 30, 2026, Photography: Jason Wyche, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

05/27/2026

We are pleased to announce that José Dávila’s The Simple Act of Positioning, has been extended through June 6 at Sean Kelly, New York.

With this new body of work, Dávila continues his sustained investigation into one of sculpture’s most elemental gestures: the fundamental act of placing one thing in relation to another. Rather than transforming materials through carving or modeling, he works through deliberate acts of positioning, arranging elements so that relationships, tensions, and meanings emerge between them.

Dávila approaches sculpture not simply as an object, but as a situation in which meaning arises through the relationships between materials. His work employs stones, concrete forms, industrial materials, steel beams, sandbags, and geometric volumes, brought together in configurations that appear both precise and improbable. Each element retains its material identity, yet through their arrangement, the works register weight, gravity, and balance in newly perceived ways.

Images: Jose Dávila, Simple Position (Yellow Cylinders), 2026, metal and automotive paint, 58 3/8 x 91 7/16 x 44 1/2 inches; Installation view of Jose Dávila: The Simple Act of Positioning at Sean Kelly, New York, April 17 – May 30, 2026, Photography: Jason Wyche, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

05/26/2026

In Callum Innes’s work, layers of paint are laid down on meticulously gessoed canvas and ultimately covered in black. Innes then uses turpentine to remove the layers from sections of the painting, revealing the luminous color that lies underneath. The process is repeated several times, alternating between application and removal.

In his Exposed Paintings, the residue from this process is left on the canvas’s surface directly below the “exposed” section, creating another layer of color altogether. The rectangle, with its rational four points and sides, symbolizes elements, seasons, and reason itself, while the oval, with its earthier, sensuous nature, signifies unity and balance.

Image: Callum Innes, Exposed Painting Quinacridone Gold, 2021, Oil on Linen, 92 1/2 x 90 9/16 inches

05/22/2026

At the core of Rochefort’s artistic process lies a blend of creation and destruction. Beginning with unfired clay, Rochefort employs a method that involves layering each object with a variety of colorants and glazes, infusing each object with an element of spontaneous uncertainty.

Through meticulous airbrushing and the use of proprietary glazes and techniques of his own invention, Rochefort transforms his sculptures into chromatically rich marvels, reminiscent of natural formations found in subterranean cave systems and marine habitats. Central to Rochefort’s artistic vision is the exploration of otherworldly surfaces and forms. His sculptures often feature interior spaces adorned with pooled glazes and melted glass, evoking the mysterious depths of subterranean landscapes.

Pushing his medium into inventive new realms, Rochefort’s creations are imbued with a deep ecological consciousness, embodying the essence of fragile ecosystems that serve as testament to his commitment to environmental stewardship.

Images: Brian Rochefort, Howler Code, 2025, ceramic, glaze, glass fragments, 20 x 22 x 24 inches © Brian Rochefort Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

05/21/2026

Lindsay Adams builds upon a long artistic lineage of artists engaging with the color black throughout the history of painting and abstraction. Painters as diverse as Francisco Goya, Eugène Delacroix, and Kazimir Malevich deployed black to evoke drama, horror, the psychological intensity of violence and struggle, and even spirituality over the ages. Adams repositions this legacy within a broader contemporary conversation among artists such as Mary Lovelace O’Neal and Raymond Sanders, whose practices similarly explore the conceptual and material possibilities of black within abstraction.

Luminous blues, pinks, and yellows move across the surface in energetic brushstrokes. Color is not fixed but accumulative and responsive, emerging through a process of addition, removal, and rearticulation, with each layer carrying the essence of prior decisions. Adams’ gestures defy containment, the marks are unbound. Through chiaroscuro, she activates moments of luminosity and obscurity, allowing forms to emerge, recede, and dissolve within the surface.

Images: Lindsay Adams, let’s watch the thunderstorms from the front porch, 2026, oil, oil pastel, and oil stick on canvas, 24 x 24 inches; Installation view of Lindsay Adams: SOIL at Sean Kelly, New York, April 17 – May 30, 2026, Photography: Jason Wyche, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

05/20/2026

“Moving beyond the objective, they focused on finding form in light, shadow, and pattern, where the subjective became abstract, and the quotidian became more expressive and at times, sensual.” - Jeffrey Grove, Director, Museums & Publications, Sean Kelly

Acutely attuned to subtle nuances of color, tone, and light, and the dynamics of space that her works occupy, Sam Moyer’s interest in materiality and the relationship between organic and constructed form drives a practice unrestricted by traditional notions of beauty, or distinctions between painting and sculpture.

Each of Moyer’s large paintings is a unique composition of variegated and multi-hued sections of repurposed marble, slate and stone combined with fabrics in a spectrum of colors. By embedding fragments of reclaimed marble into textured, hand-painted surfaces, Moyer highlights the interplay between natural material and artistic intervention.

Images: Sam Moyer, Blue Harpoon Hosta, 2018, marble, hand painted canvas mounted to MDF panel, 74 7/8 x 49 3/16 x 1 1/4 inches Photo: JSP Art Photography

05/19/2026

“I wanted to develop a body of work on the premise of filtering down sculpture to its most primitive action. It’s most simple action.” - Jose Dávila

In The Simple Act of Positioning, the sculptures create situations in which materials encounter one another, and new relationships become visible. In this sense, Dávila’s work returns to a gesture that lies close to the origin of sculpture itself: the simple act of placing one thing beside another, allowing matter, space, and human attention to converge.

Jose Dávila: The Simple Act of Positioning is on view through May 30, 2026, at Sean Kelly, New York.

Video by Sean Kelly Gallery

05/18/2026

Our booth at TEFAF New York features a salon-style installation of intimate smaller works highlighting pieces from a broad range of artistic practices.

Edgar Degas’s drawing study for the painting Joséphine Gaujelin, 1867, depicts the delicate hands of the dancer and actress, shifting from robust lines to subtle shading rendered in pencil. A 1947 drawing by Louise Bourgeois depicts a totemic figure connecting the body, psyche and subjectivity, revealing the artist’s subconscious through her daily drawing ritual. Rooted in Latin American traditions, Hilda Palafox’s work on paper engages with the body’s relationship to the land, addressing themes of identity and resilience through a distinctly feminine lens.

Evocative of the natural world, Janaina Tschäpe’s biomorphic forms and gestural marks of her watercolor painting functions as an expression of the artist’s interior thoughts. Pioneering Cuban artist Loló Soldevilla employs a mirror effect technique in her geometric abstraction, in which elements are reflected, with slight variations, across a vertical axis, mimicking the forms undulating in a dynamic musical composition.

TEFAF New York
Stand #330
Park Avenue Armory
May 15-19, 2026

Images: Sean Kelly at TEFAF New York 2026, May 15-19, 2026, New York, New York, Stand 330, Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano, Courtesy: Sean Kelly New York

05/17/2026

Kehinde Wiley’s work is situated within the lineage of Western portraiture, asserting a space for Black and brown bodies within a tradition that has long excluded them. As a contemporary artist of the grand manner of portrait painting—invoking the iconic historical artists, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Titian, Ingres, amongst others—Wiley appropriates and transforms the stylistic codes of power, elegance, and divinity. His sitters are portrayed with regal poise and striking presence, their contemporary clothing and attitudes juxtaposed against richly patterned, often fantastical backdrops that reference historic decorative traditions from various cultures.

Wiley’s deployment of religious and monarchical motifs positions his subject as both saint and sovereign, destabilizing expectations around race, class, and historical memory. The painting resists easy interpretation, embodying the ambiguity that lies at the heart of Wiley’s practice. By placing Black and brown subjects within frameworks traditionally reserved for white aristocracy or religious exaltation, Wiley creates a powerful tension between representation and erasure, reverence and critique. His portraits are at once deeply rooted in history and radically contemporary, offering a vital reimagining of identity, agency, and glory in today’s visual culture.

TEFAF New York 2026
Stand #330
Park Avenue Armory
Public Dates: May 15-19, 2026

Images: Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of Olawaiye Ebubechukwu Olagoke, 2024, oil on panel, painting: 6 x 5 1/4 inches, framed: 16 11/16 x 15 7/8 x 3 3/8 inches

Address

New York, NY

Telephone

+12122391181

Website

http://www.skny.com/

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