David Nolan Gallery is moving to Tribeca and expanding its New York presence. The new space at 74 Leonard Street—designed by Markus Dochantschi’s studioMDA—marks the gallery’s departure from the Upper East Side. The inaugural exhibition features the work of Valerio Adami, focusing on paintings and drawings from the 1960s. This expansion comes as the gallery approaches its fortieth anniversary, a time when the international gallery sector is rethinking its models and strategies and grappling with the concept of increasingly unconventional spaces. The closures of Clearing and Sperone Westwater have been accompanied by Blum’s announced reorganization and the cost-cutting measures adopted—in various ways—by Pace, David Zwirner, and Gagosian. Against this backdrop, investing in new premises is far from an obvious choice.
"There is rarely a perfect moment to expand or open a new gallery," observes Nolan. What makes it possible is his confidence in the artists and the relationships built over the years with collectors and curators. The gallerist recalls that friends and colleagues had frequently tried to dissuade him from moving downtown. Crucial, however, was the support of Valentina Branchini, a partner at David Nolan Gallery since 2018: "I’d say the idea was a bit more Valentina’s than mine," he acknowledges. The Leonard Street premises—identified by Dochantschi—will offer the opportunity to give the exhibitions more breathing room and the program greater visibility.
Tribeca also offers the opportunity to become part of a gallery landscape that has reshaped the city’s artistic geography in recent years. For Nolan, returning downtown means recapturing some of the vitality of SoHo, where he opened his first space in 1987 with an exhibition of drawings by Sigmar Polke. A focus on works on paper soon became central to the gallery’s programming identity, bringing together artists such as Georg Baselitz, Martin Kippenberger, Richard Artschwager, and Barry Le Va, while balancing contemporary exploration with an enduring interest in historical re-examinations.
It is within this continuity that Adami’s exhibition—born of a dialogue with Giò Marconi—is situated. When the opportunity arose to collaborate on the Bolognese artist, Nolan chose to focus on the 1960s: "I believe he held a truly international standing back then." Alice in the Land of Violence—running until October 24—brings together works created between 1962 and 1967, refocusing attention on a pivotal moment in his artistic journey, during which the pictorial language that would define his subsequent output began to take shape.
Nolan views this phase primarily in relation to European Pop Art, citing Richard Hamilton—whose interest in Adami he recalls—and Peter Blake. Advertising, comic books, and mass-culture imagery provide the artist with a repertoire of figures and objects to deconstruct and reassemble in ever-changing relationships. Underlying the imagery of automobiles, bodies in motion, and unsettling interior scenes, one can discern the tensions of postwar Europe: the search for new values, anxiety regarding another conflict, and the atomic threat. These are themes the gallerist finds particularly relevant to the present day, prompting the decision to reintroduce Adami’s work to New York. Hence the close affinities identified with Philip Guston, Peter Saul, and Carroll Dunham regarding narrative construction, the distortion of the figure, and the political charge of everyday imagery. Adami’s works thus lend themselves to a broader interpretation, highlighting the originality of his contribution to the history of painting—a history to be re-examined through the lens of the dialogue with the other side of the Atlantic.
