CLEARING, the New York–based gallery known for championing artists like Marguerite Humeau, Korakrit Arunanondchai, and Harold Ancart, will close its Manhattan and Los Angeles galleries.
In an Instagram post, founder Olivier Babin said there was “no viable path forward” for the business. The closure ends the gallery’s 14-year run, which began in 2011 in Brooklyn.
CLEARING is the fourth major gallery to announce its closure in the past month, following BLUM, Venus Over Manhattan, and Kasmin.. In an interview with The Art Newspaper, Babin said the gallery was “crushed by the overheads,” pointing to rising costs for rent, shipping, and art fairs alongside declining revenues.
The gallery opened at a time when the Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn was home to a vibrant network of arts spaces, such as Luhring Augustine’s project space and Signal. The year after it opened, the gallery expanded to Brussels. In its early years, it mounted shows for artists like Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Huma Bhabha, among several other luminaries. In recent years, the gallery made significant moves to expand its presence, opening a location in Los Angeles in 2020 and moving from Brooklyn to a three-story space in the Bowery in 2023.
In 2024, the gallery announced a restructuring in which CLEARING would split its U.S. and European entities. The Brussels location is now operated independently by former CLEARING director Lodovico Corsini under his namesake.
Babin said that CLEARING’s Bowery space, which came with higher rent, coincided with a slowdown in the art market and proved financially unsustainable.
CLEARING’s final exhibitions were solo painting shows by Coco Young in New York and Henry Curchod in Los Angeles, both of which closed earlier this summer. In June, the gallery staged “Maison Clearing,” a pop-up group exhibition in Basel featuring 46 artists.
“CLEARING was, first and foremost, a shared endeavor, and any success we encountered belongs to all of you,” Babin wrote. “Serving at the head of CLEARING has been the great honor of my life.”
