Clearing, the New York–based gallery that provided early exposure to artists such as Korakrit Arunanondchai, Harold Ancart, and Marguerite Humeau, has closed, marking an end to a 14-year run. The gallery will close its spaces in both New York and Los Angeles.
Clearing is the fourth gallery with a New York presence to close in the past month, after Blum, Venus Over Manhattan, and Kasmin, the latter of which announced plans yesterday to wind up operations and transition into a new entity known as Olney Gleason.
A range of other enterprises have closed over the past year or so in New York, from blue-chip ones like Mitchell-Innes & Nash to mid-size ones like David Lewis, whose namesake dealer went on to join Hauser & Wirth as a senior director.
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Clearing’s final shows were solo exhibitions for Coco Young and Henry Curchod in New York and Los Angeles, respectively. The Young show closed in June, and the Curchod show closed in July.
Olivier Babin, the founder of Clearing, did not provide a precise reasoning for his closure, writing in a statement posted to social media, “It was not an easy decision. Until the very end, we hoped to turn the corner. But with no viable path forward, we are closing today because we can no longer operate at the standards we’ve always held ourselves to — for our artists, our teams, and our entire community.”
The gallery opened in 2011 in Brooklyn and rose in stature to become one of the more high-profile galleries located in Bushwick, a neighborhood that was at the time teeming with art spaces. In its massive space there, it exhibited large-scale video installations by Arunanondchai and Meriem Bennani, massive sculptures by Humeau and Bruno Gironcoli, and paintings by Ancart, who had 10 solo shows with Clearing before defecting to David Zwirner. (Ancart is now on the roster of the mega-gallery Gagosian.)
A range of other key artists also exhibited with Clearing, from Lili Reynaud-Dewar to Zak Kitnick, from Hugh Hayden to Marina Pinsky, and Jean-Marie Appriou to Huma Bhabha.
Clearing expanded to Brussels in 2012 and to Los Angeles in 2020. In 2023, Clearing departed Brooklyn and relocated its New York operations to the Bowery, where it operated out of a three-floor space.
Signs of a potential behind-the-scenes shake-up emerged in 2024, when Artnet News reported that Babin and Lodovico Corsini, who helped run the Brussels space, did not see eye to eye on the direction of Clearing’s European operations. The gallery then went on to announce that “the American and European entities of the gallery are going separate ways.” Corsini subsequently took charge of the Brussels space and now operates it under his name.
“We want to thank all the artists who gave meaning to this adventure, and we salute the institutions, curators, and collectors who championed their vision,” Clearing wrote in its statement on Thursday. “To our teams — past and present — thank you for your dedication and hard work. CLEARING was, first and foremost, a shared endeavor, and any success we encountered belongs to all of you.”