Urban explorer photographer Isaac Wright’s comeback show at Robert Mann Gallery in Chelsea on Thursday evening was cut short after four NYPD officers stormed the opening and arrested him.
The next day, a police spokesperson confirmed that former US paratrooper Wright – known professionally as “Drift” – had been charged with criminal trespassing in the third degree, which is a class B misdemeanor under New York State law. They also said he was no longer in custody.
Eyewitnesses said the arrest happened just before 8 p.m., two hours after “Coming Home” – Wright’s first solo gallery exhibition – opened to the public.
Edward Zipco, the co-founder of Superchief Gallery, told NFT News that a suspicious woman was “lurking” in the gallery before Wright was apprehended. “People were talking about it later like it was a honeypot,” he said. “Apparently, she was undercover. After about half an hour, she signaled to the police.”
Fellow urban explorer, Vitaliy Raskolov, was at the opening and said he had “never seen anything like it before.” “The cops could’ve called him, or gone to his house,” he told NFT News. “To arrest the guy at his own exhibition, in front of cameras and everyone, it just makes people hate the police even more.”
Wright is known for jumping fences and scrambling up skyscrapers to take high-altitude photography, including shots from the top of New York’s Queensboro Bridge. He was profiled by the New York Times on May 10 before his ill-fated show – and was previously locked up for four months in December 2020 for illegally climbing three structures in Cincinnati. The police search several states and shut down an interstate highway to catch him.
“Being locked up turned out to be a gift,” he told the New York Times. “It was motivating. I couldn’t understand the freedom I was trying to express until I lost it all and was forced to fight for it.”
While a paratrooper, Wright was deployed to the Middle East. He later became a chaplain at an army base in Louisiana before being diagnosed with depression – but found therapy in photography in 2018.
After being released from prison in 2021, his work started selling for thousands of dollars amid the NFTA craze and he reportedly soon had $10 million in the bank.
He continued to climb buildings, including the Empire State and The New York Times Headquarters in Midtown, despite it being a violation of his probation, before being offered his show at Robert Mann Gallery.
ARTnews has contacted the gallery comment.
