10 Artists Who Gained Representation with Major Galleries in 2022
For a number of artists, 2022 has delivered true star-making achievements, including significant solo exhibitions, sold-out booths at major art fairs, buzzworthy installations, and standout works of art. However, there is one accomplishment that may stand above the rest: that of the esteemed and much coveted declaration of gallery representation.
Especially with a blue-chip gallery, such a distinction demonstrates the potential for long-term institutional support and recognition of an artist’s craft, while introducing an artist’s practice to a wider audience of collectors. Below, we share 10 artists who have gained notable gallery representation this year.
This article is part of The Art Market Recap 2022—a look at the major sales, trends, and artists that made an impact this year. Download the full report here.
Acaye Kerunen
New gallery representation in 2022: Blum & Poe, Galerie Kandlhofer, Pace Gallery
Acaye Kerunen, Ouganda, 2021. © Acaye Kerunen. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo.
Acaye Kerunen, Wanen I (We are seen), 2022. © Acaye Kerunen. Photo by Dawn Blackman. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo.
Acaye Kerunen is a master storyteller. The multidisciplinary artist works across curation, activism, poetry, performance, sculpture, and weaving to deliver powerful narratives on farm labor and local craft production in Uganda. Born in Kampala, Uganda, where she is currently based, Kerunen made her international debut earlier this year.
Most notably, Kerunen’s impressive installations were seen by thousands at the 59th Venice Biennale as part of Uganda’s first-ever national pavilion presentation. Exhibited alongside the work of artist Collin Sekajugo, her textile sculptures evoke craft-based practices local to Kampala, like bikapu fiber bags. Addressing the intergenerational labor of Ugandan women, her work features biomorphic textures constructed with banana fibers through hand stitching, knotting, and weaving techniques passed onto her from her mother.
Kerunen’s sculptural installations challenge Euro-American art hierarchies that too often overlook craft-based practices in favor of painting. But after her standout presentation at the Ugandan pavilion, Kerunen received representation with three leading galleries: Pace Gallery, Blum & Poe, and Galerie Kandlhofer.
Following this announcement, Kerunen’s work made a splash in Pace’s booth at Frieze London, and with Blum & Poe at Art Basel in Miami Beach. The artist also has solo exhibitions lined up for spring 2023 at Blum & Poe and Galerie Kandlhofer.
Allison Katz
New gallery representation in 2022: Hauser & Wirth
Also represented by: Antenna Space, dépendance, Gió Marconi
Allison Katz, Interior View I, 2021. © Allison Katz. Photo by Plastiques photography, Lewis Ronald. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Allison Katz, Blondie, 2021. © Allison Katz. Photo by Eva Herzog. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Allison Katz’s expressive figurative paintings probe the space between mirrors and masks. With a BFA from Concordia University in her hometown of Montréal and an MFA from Columbia University, Katz reflects upon the demands of authenticity in public spaces in hopes of uncovering what lies beneath outward appearances. Using bright colors and enlarged everyday items set in unnatural contexts, her paintings invite viewers to reconsider their relationship with the ordinary by emphasizing how bizarre the ordinariness of daily life can be.
Following her critically acclaimed presentation in “The Milk of Dreams,” the main exhibition curated by Cecilia Alemani at this year’s Venice Biennale, Katz parted ways with her New York gallery Luhring Augustine for one of the biggest blue-chip galleries in the world: Hauser & Wirth. In 2023, Hauser & Wirth will host her debut solo exhibition at its Los Angeles location. Katz, who is now based in London, will continue to work with her other galleries, Shanghai’s Antenna Space, Brussels’s dépendance, and Milan’s Giò Marconi.
Angel Otero
New gallery representation in 2022: Hauser & Wirth
Angel Otero, Mi Acuario, 2022. © Angel Otero. Photo by Thomas Barratt. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Angel Otero’s messy yet refined oil paintings unpack the interiority of solitude during the COVID-19 lockdown and thereafter. Depicting scenes of the home with thick layers of oil paint, Otero invites audiences to peer inwards into domestic spaces. The artist, who was born in Puerto Rico and is currently based in Malden, New York, received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Otero arrived at his distinctive style by merging painting with collage and sculpture, extending the medium’s parameters beyond something that is presented on a wall, not unlike the folded canvases pioneered by Sam Gilliam. Using found objects reminiscent of his childhood, Otero folds his personal experiences into his large-scale paintings to examine a multitude of narratives about home that transcend the events of his own individual life. Drawing upon both personal memory and references to art historical canonical figures like Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky, Otero’s work speaks to the in-between nature that emerges from migration.
In 2022, Otero had his inaugural solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth in New York. In addition to this notable accomplishment, Otero’s work has been acquired by esteemed institutions like the Guggenheim Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the DePaul Art Museum, among numerous others.
Chase Hall
New gallery representation in 2022: David Kordansky Gallery, Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Chase Hall, Twenty-First of June, 2022. Photo by Phoebe d’Heurle. Courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery.
Chase Hall, The Corner where I Became A Witness, 2022. Photo by Phoebe d’Heurle. Courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery.
Chase Hall’s emotive paintings examine and unpack the artist’s biracial identity—an investigation prompted by a studio visit with the artist Sondra Perry. Hall was in residence at the esteemed Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, when Perry said, “You love Black history, but your mom is white,” asking, “Where is that in the work?” From that moment on, Hall aimed to bring all of himself and his heritage to his practice.
Using a combination of acrylic and coffee, Hall paints scenes of sociality between various groups of people as they play pool, hang out, and converse. These ordinary moments are heightened by the complicated and tense history of race relations that form the foundation of the United States. His figurative paintings question the binary classifications of race by evoking the histories of blended families.
This past year was a breakthrough for Hall, who was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and is now based between New York and Los Angeles. He received representation with the bicoastal David Kordansky Gallery, as well as Galerie Eva Presenhuber, which has locations in Zürich, Vienna, and New York. This only adds to the rising status of the artist, whose work is in the collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, ICA Miami, and the Rubell Museum.
Deana Lawson
New gallery representation in 2022: Gagosian
Also represented by: David Kordansky Gallery
Deana Lawson, Nation, 2018. Pigment print, collaged photograph, 55 1/2 x 67 1/4 inches. © Deana Lawson. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.
Deana Lawson’s intimate portraits of Black life are somehow both stark and lush, personal and stunningly universal. Her compositions follow the aesthetics that we may find in the homes of friends, lovers, and family members—scenes reminiscent of her adolescence. Lawson uses this distinctive style of photography to seek out collaborators across the Black diaspora, and produce intimate portraits that become part of a larger, public lineage of sociality. By posing her subjects and pairing strangers together, she purposefully toys with the perceptions of authenticity that shroud representations of Black life across the history of photography.
After a critically acclaimed mid-career survey that traveled to MoMA PS1, the High Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Lawson concluded the year with representation from the heavyweight Gagosian while maintaining co-representation with David Kordansky Gallery. She celebrated the announcement with a showing of her work in a joint presentation with Sally Mann in Gagosian’s booth at Paris Photo this past November.
Jiab Prachakul, Fantastic Night, 2022. © Jiab Prachakul. Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor, London/New York.
Jiab Prachakul’s expressive figurative portraits are based on her astute observations of everyday life across the Asian diaspora. With distinctive and expressive brushstrokes, Prachakul unravels how identity is manufactured across time and place. In her exhaustive paintings, smaller elements that would be ignored in other portraits are emphasized. These details include facial expressions, outfits, and accessories that represent the souvenirs the subject has collected throughout their life. This attention to detail is befitting to the artistic practice of Prachakul, who received a degree in journalism from Thammasat University in Bangkok and worked as a casting coordinator at Big Blue Production.
Born in Nahkon Phanom, Thailand, the self-taught artist—who is now based in Vannes, France—was inspired to move away from commercial casting and advertising after an encounter with David Hockney’s work at the National Portrait Gallery. Her paintings have since been featured in the New York Times, Frieze, and Vogue Thailand. This year, she joined the illustrious roster of the London- and New York–based Timothy Taylor, which will co-represent her alongside San Francisco’s Micki Meng (formerly Friends Indeed Gallery).
Tammy Nguyen
New gallery representation in 2022: Lehmann Maupin
Tammy Nguyen, Narcissus and the Shore: At Rest, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London.
Tammy Nguyen’s earthly paintings infuse fantastical environments with dazzling characters and creatures. Her work is unique for its combination of watercolor, vinyl paint, pastel, and metal leaf on paper, which she treats as a canvas by stretching it over panels. This mix of materials yields rich hues of green and blue that dominate Nguyen’s scenes.
Against her leafy green backgrounds, characters across the Asian diaspora appear in ordinary settings. For example, in Woman (2021), a figure wearing a face mask with cucumbers on her eyes stands in a grassy field. In paintings where creatures like bats emerge, the scenarios are even more fantastical as they battle with other animals and elements of the luscious forest landscapes they are set against.
Nguyen honed her artistic practice at Yale, where she received an MFA in painting and printmaking. Prior to that, the San Francisco–born, New York–based artist received a BFA from Cooper Union. In addition to these acclaimed degrees, Nguyen has obtained several competitive fellowships over the course of her career, including a Fulbright in 2007, a Van Lier Fellowship at Wave Hill in 2014, and a NYSCA/NYFA award in painting in 2021. To add to this list of recognitions, she joined the roster of Lehmann Maupin earlier this year.
Lisa Brice
New gallery representation in 2022: Thaddaeus Ropac and Sadie Coles HQ
Also represented by: Goodman Gallery
Lisa Brice, Smoke and Mirrors, 2020. © Lisa Brice. Courtesy of the artist.
In Lisa Brice’s ghostly paintings, women haunt domestic interiors. The London-based, Cape Town–born artist uses soft brushstrokes and vivid blue hues to cast women in a surreal environment. Brice’s figurative works often draw upon and challenge the Euro-American art historical canon of the female nude by placing the motif in relation with other women as they gaze back at the viewer.
Brice’s technique often involves the use of tracing paper, which allows her to physically and metaphorically work through ideas of repetition and (re)examine how stories are told. In an interview with the Tate, Brice said, “I am drawn to the ambiguity that people and places can hold. Sometimes the compositions of my paintings feel like cinematic outtakes: the moments between directed actions, when the figures are ‘on their own time,’ self-involved, performing only for themselves or one another.”
Brice has been represented by Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg since 1997. This year, she parted ways with London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery and New York’s Salon 94—both of which have represented her since 2017—and joined the rosters of Sadie Coles HQ and Thaddaeus Ropac, which now represent her in London and Paris respectively.
Marguerite Humeau, installation view of Migrations, 2022, in “The Milk of Dreams” at the 59th Venice Biennale, 2022. © Marguerite Humeau. Photo by Roberto Marossi. Courtesy of White Cube.
Marguerite Humeau’s large-scale sculptures sent shockwaves through the main exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale. Made from biological and synthetic resins and polymers, salt, hone, pigments, mineral dust, and glass, among other materials, they evoke creatures and buried structures from the deepest depths of the ocean.
Her “Migrations” series, for example, is composed of three sculptures named after ocean currents: El Niño, La Niña, and Kuroshio (all 2022). Rendered in a nautical color palette, Humeau’s work takes inspiration from fauna, biology, and climate collapse. Many of her seemingly delicate yet frighteningly imposing pieces are reminiscent of unearthed bones. In fact, the artist looked to death rituals performed by marine and land-based mammals to imbue her sculptures with a spiritual force. In particular, a viral video of a whale carrying its child’s corpse for days was a key influence behind Humeau’s work and approach to the series.
Born in Cholet, France, Humeau is currently based in London, where she received her MA in design interactions from the Royal College of Art. Her work has been acquired by acclaimed institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, The Warehouse Dallas, and Centre Pompidou, among others. This year, she joined the impressive roster of White Cube, which will co-represent her alongside the Brussels- and New York–based C L E A R I N G.
Hermann Nitsch
New gallery representation in 2022: Pace Gallery
Also represented by: Galerie Kandlhofer, Nitsch Foundation
Hermann Nitsch, action painting, 1962. Courtesy of private collection.
Hermann Nitsch, action painting from the 20th painting action, 1987. Courtesy of private collection.
Hermann Nitsch’s visceral photographs, performances, and paintings compelled and repelled throes of audiences across the 20th and 21st centuries. He was even a founding member of the Viennese Actionists group, a collective of performance artists who challenged customs around the body through the use of fluids, ritual animal sacrifices, and pain. This theater of spectacle sought to disrupt the sensibilities of the bourgeois, but ultimately caused Nitsch’s work to be shunned in numerous countries, including his native Austria.
In February of this year, just prior to his death at the age of 83 in April, Pace Gallery announced its representation of Nitsch. The news coincided with the presentation of his 20th painting action (originally staged in Vienna in 1987) on the Italian island of Giudecca during the run of the 59th Venice Biennale. Pace, which now co-manages the artist’s estate alongside the Nitsch Foundation and Galerie Kandlhofer, will host a solo exhibition of recent works at its New York location in 2023.
Nitsch received a degree from Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna in 1958, though he swiftly switched gears to art production after seeing the paintings made by Abstract Expressionists. Like those pieces, Nitsch’s work aimed to introduce a new visual language into the space of art appreciation, but with blood and guts rather than acrylic paint alone.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the date of Angel Otero’s first solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth. The exhibition was held in 2022, not 2023.
