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History
Rooted on the Lower East Side since 2007, James Fuentes is committed to surveying, constructively revising, and creatively shaping the history of New York art in situ. The gallery’s program is led first by exceptional contemporary artists who are atypical from the conventions of their field. With a focus on humanity, history, and society through a non-exclusionary approach, the gallery continues to position itself as a leader in the field as our contemporary institutions seek to do the same. In 2023, the gallery opened its Los Angeles outpost in the burgeoning Melrose Hill neighborhood, and in the spring of 2024 it will relocated its New York home to 52 White St in Tribeca with an inaugural exhibition of work by Kikuo Saito (1939-2016) whose studio was mere blocks from the address. 52 White St is notable as the original venue of The Collective for Living Cinema, founded there in 1973 and running for 19 years. The Collective was an artist-run cooperative and multidisciplinary space often described as the liveliest New York film venue of its time. Inhabiting this history in the present, the gallery strives to show the work of artists in the diverse and flourishing neighborhoods that continue to bring it to life.

Timeline
Prior to founding the gallery, Fuentes worked for several notable galleries including Gavin Brown and Jeffrey Deitch, where he served as a Director before moving on to open his own space. Since its founding, James Fuentes gallery has twice expanded, and is currently located at 55 Delancey Street featuring two exhibition spaces as well as a basement project space, with all exhibitions presented free and open to the public. In 2023 the gallery opened its first West Coast location in the Melrose Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles. In March of 2024 the gallery is slated to opened its new primary location at 52 White St, Tribeca, New York with a solo exhibition by Kikuo Saito curated by Christopher Y. Lew.

Represented Artists
The gallery represents artists across a range of generations and media, including Alison Knowles, Didier William , Amalia Ulman, Oscar yi Hou, and Lizzi Bougatsos. The gallery also represents the estates of Juanita McNeely, Kikuo Saito , Geoffrey Holder , Ed Baynard, and Elsa Rensaa.The gallery has been instrumental in introducing the work of emerging and otherwise overlooked artists who would rise to prominence in the national and international art world, including Amalia Ulman, Jonas Mekas , and Lonnie Holley.

The gallery has also exhibited exceptional historical works by notable artists such as Thornton Dial, Juanita McNeely, and Andy Warhol —whose 1964 eight-hour film, Empire, the gallery screened in full for the first month of the work’s 50th-anniversary year, requiring a live projectionist on-hand throughout the presentation. Many of the artists shown have been featured in major museums including the Whitney Museum and Whitney Biennial, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) , Guggenheim Museum , Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago , The National Gallery in Washington DC, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The gallery has also facilitated museum collection acquisitions by leading museums, including the Whitney, MoMA, and Guggenheim museums in New York.

Fairs
The gallery has consistently participated in major international art fairs, including Art Basel: Basel, where gallery artist Alison Knowles has been presented seminal artworks including the performance piece Make A Salad (in 2016) as well as her computer-generated poem sculpture, House of Dust (in 2021) ; Art Basel Miami Beach ; the Armory Fair ; and Independent 20th Century.

Online Presence
In 2020 the gallery launched its dedicated online exhibition platform, James Fuentes Online, through which it has since presented 120 artists in over sixty digital exhibitions. In 2021 it launched James Fuentes Press, so far publishing nine print titles focusing on individual artists.

Press
The gallery’s exhibitions and artists have regularly been featured is notable publications including The New York Times, Artforum , Art in America , Frieze , The Art Newspaper , Los Angeles Times , Forbes , Financial Times , Artnet News , The New Yorker , Time Out NY , The Wall Street Journal , Vogue , and The Guardian.

Over this time, James Fuentes’ expertise as a gallerist has been profiled in numerous publications. Early on, this included features in Artnet News as well as the Village Voice, which reported Fuentes’ “affinity for street-smart, context-sensitive art” a year after the gallery’s founding. A 2011 Financial Times report on the Lower East Side went on to note the gallery’s consistently ambitious programming. Office Magazine profiled Fuentes in a 2015 interview, as well as in 2017 , describing the gallery as a “continuously reliable source for easy access to contemporary art” ten years after its inception. In 2016, the Artsy article “Why New York’s Most Important Art District Is Now the Lower East Side” quoted Fuentes on his early presence in the burgeoning Downtown art community, and continued dedication to the scene. Most recently, Bloomberg noted the resilience and inventiveness of the gallery in response to the dramatic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in the art industry; and in mid-2021, The New York Times Style Magazine enlisted Fuentes’ insights on collecting and adapting to this continually changing market. Fuentes has also spoken on various panels, and was featured as Guest Speaker at the Sotheby’s Institute, which introduced the gallerist as “widely considered as a leading voice among the new generation of gallery owners.”