Tanya Bonakdar Gallery will close its Los Angeles space just seven years after opening it. The last exhibition there will be its current one for Ben Hyunjin, whose solo show closes on August 29.
“Tanya Bonakdar Gallery has made the considered decision not to renew the lease on its Los Angeles space, which concludes this September,” the gallery said in a statement. “After seven meaningful years on Highland Avenue, the lease’s end offered a natural pause to assess, and celebrate, all we have accomplished with the Los Angeles gallery exhibition program.”
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, which is based in New York, opened in Los Angeles in 2018. Its namesake dealer said at the time that she had made the decision to launch the gallery because many artists on her roster “expressed interest in having a presence on the West Coast.”
Since then, the gallery has mounted shows there for artists such as Amalia Pica, Laura Lima, Susan Philipsz, and more. In the intervening period, many other galleries have expanded their operations to LA, including David Zwirner, Michael Werner, and Lisson. (In 2023, Tanya Bonakdar lost a major LA-based artist, Kelly Akashi, to Lisson.)
In the past two months alone, two galleries with notable LA presences have shuttered. Blum, which first opened in Santa Monica in 1994, announced plans to wind down operations in July. Then, earlier this month, New York–based gallery Clearing, which also had a space in LA, also announced it would close, with its founder he saying he saw “no viable path forward.”
Artnet News’s Eileen Kinsella first reported the news.
