New York Stalwart James Fuentes Gallery Is Becoming a Bicoastal Beacon

After a few years of working for the esteemed art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, James Fuentes found himself questioning his future in the art world. “I had learned over the years that being a gallerist was the kind of job that gets harder,” Fuentes told Artsy. Still in his twenties, he briefly thought about leaving the gallery world behind, but instead stumbled upon a two-story building on Saint James Place in New York’s Chinatown. “It was serendipitous, finding this unique location, this inexpensive building,” he recalled. Then, in 2007, Fuentes and his now-wife, Branwen Jones (who is a partner at David Zwirner), moved into the apartment upstairs, and he opened James Fuentes—fixed near the corner of Saint James and James Street. “I’m sometimes a real believer in signs,” he said.

By 2010, Fuentes had relocated the gallery to a more prominent location on Delancey Street in the Lower East Side, a move that would cement the gallery as a pillar of the neighborhood’s art scene. Today, the long-revered gallery has expanded its footprint beyond the Lower East Side, inaugurating an outpost in Los Angeles in May 2023; it will also open a new Tribeca location at 52 White Street next month. The inaugural Tribeca show, Kikuo Saito’s “Color Codes,” curated by Christopher Y. Lew, marks a significant milestone for the gallerist. “I’m excited about, for the first time in my career, being in the center of everything, whereas we were always on the periphery,” Fuentes said.

From the onset, Fuentes embraced a protective and close ethos towards the artists on the gallery roster. A prime example is the 90-year-old artist Alison Knowles, whose first solo exhibition at the gallery, “Clear Skies All Week,” showed in 2011. A little over 10 years ago, according to Fuentes, Knowles’s recognition was fading—despite her being a prominent member and the only female founder of the Fluxus movement, an influential group of artists in the 1960s and early 1970s that renounced traditional rubrics for art, theater, and music. Here, Fuentes recognized that his role as a gallerist was not only to show work, but also to protect his artists’ legacies.

“I realized that if we didn’t do something to help preserve her legacy, that it was at risk,” Fuentes said. “She was the only female member of the Fluxus movement. She was a real close peer of performance art with Carolee Schneemann, entrenched with John Cage, and that was a very early relationship that we fostered over a long time.…Our work on building her archive led to her first solo show at the Carnegie Museum [in 2016].”

For the emerging gallery, featuring Knowles’s work was instrumental in defining its curatorial direction and approach to its programming. Fuentes has often invested in artists that do not fit the stereotypically “commercial” prerequisites, including Knowles, Amalia Ulman, and Berta Fischer.

“The fact that we’re able to still keep moving forward, especially given the fact that we’re not always presenting or advocating for artists that are so easily commodified, for me, feels still very significantly important to our ethos,” Fuentes said.

That said, Fuentes remembers that John McAllister, an artist celebrated for his bright landscape paintings, was the first artist where “the phone was ringing off the hook” after his show “Alistair” in 2009. Following this show, McAllister gained international recognition—and a review in the New York Times. This also placed Fuentes on the map, helping him develop his first relationships with global galleries.

Fuentes’s commitment to his artists consistently pays off—and the gallerist takes a fluid approach, not afraid to take a leap of faith. “Right place, right time. These instances, these artists that I just mentioned: If you can kind of tap into their trajectory or their talent, you’re lucky,” said Fuentes. “We have that kind of relationship with our artists. We respect the force of their vitality, of their practice.”

For instance, the gallerist recalls working with Oscar yi Hou—a member of The Artsy Vanguard 2022. Fuentes met the young British Chinese artist while Hou was attending Columbia University. “I basically had sworn to myself to never show an artist right out of undergrad,” Fuentes said, admitting he broke this promise. “There was something just very wise beyond his years about who he was and his work.” Once he graduated, Fuentes presented Hou’s first solo exhibition, “A sky-licker relation,” in 2021. Shortly after, Hou received a New York Times review, a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum, and became the 2021 UOVO Prize recipient.

The gallery’s expansion to Los Angeles represents more than geographic growth; it signifies Fuentes’s ambition to embed the gallery within the cultural fabric of another major U.S. art capital, fostering a bicoastal dialogue that enriches both communities. Upcoming community initiatives—including Rob Pruitt’s artist flea market, a nomadic event hosted worldwide—intend to engage Los Angeles.