Alma Allen, the sculptor chosen to represent the United States at this year’s edition of the Venice Biennale, has joined Galerie Perrotin, a blue-chip French gallery with locations in Paris, London, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Dubai, and Los Angeles.
As ARTnews’s Maximilíano Durón and Sarah Douglas reported upon Allen’s selection in November, sources said he already was in talks to join Perrotin.
Allen was born in 1970, but has been based since 2017 in Tepoztlán, a town just outside of Cuernavaca and south of Mexico City. Prior to moving to Mexico, he was based in Joshua Tree, California. Allen is known for large-scale sculptures that are often made in stone, wood, and bronze, but he has also begun working a self-built robotic device to make his sculptures.
Prior to being taken on by Perrotin, Allen was represented by Olney Gleason and Mendes Wood DM, both of whom dropped the artist after Allen accepted the Biennale commission, according to the New York Times. In years past, Allen was represented by Blum & Poe and Kasmin, but both of those galleries closed last year. (Kasmin was transitioned into Olney Gleason last August.)
“We see him as an artist who has had a quiet and consistent practice over many years,” Rowena Chiu, a director at Perrotin’s London gallery, told the New York Times. “He comes from a family without means — he is a completely self-made person. He feels that art is something that should be able to transcend current politics.”
Chiu joined Perrotin last fall to lead the gallery’s new London location, a 3,800-square-foot space in Claridge’s, a five-star hotel in Mayfair.
Allen was an unusual pick for the American Pavilion, given his lack of high-profile museum exhibitions or commissions. He has had two major museum exhibitions: in 2023, at the Museo Anahuacalli in Mexico City, and in 2018 at the Palm Springs Art Museum in California. His CV, ARTnews previously reported, listed five museums as owning his work, including the Palm Springs Art Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In addition, his selection has been supported by the American Arts Conservancy, a Florida nonprofit recently established to oversee the exhibition.
According to the Times, Allen is bringing seven or eight new artworks to the Biennale, alongside a selection of older works that he has described as “abstract expressions of his personal history.”
The US Pavilion has been particularly fraught due to the Trump Administration’s attacks on the arts and arts funding over the last year. The administration has cut federal funding to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, cancelled grants, and cut the workforce. He has also repeatedly tried to pressure museums, including the Smithsonian Institution, to change the content of its exhibitions—to purge all “anti-American ideology”—and to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Allen told the Times that he experienced an “orchestrated campaign” by art dealers, curators, and museum directors to convince him to pull out of the Biennale commission, and specifically pointed at David Resnicow, whose communications firm counts many major institutions as clients, including past US Pavilions. (Resnicow denied the claim, and said he had raised concerns about the American Arts Conservancy’s ability to successfully “realize the project.”)
“I love the difficult context,” Allen said. “Honestly, it makes the work more interesting. If I could choose, I would always find a bit of a fraught situation to do work in.”
Perrotin has said it will provide logicial and operational support for the US Pavilion. Allen’s first show with the gallery is scheduled for this fall in Paris.
