ADDS DONNA is pleased to present Gangs of New York, curated by Essex Flowers, an artist-run gallery in New York. The exhibition is a part of the Artist-run Exchange Program, a project initiated by ADDS DONNA in 2017 with support from the Propeller Fund to exchange group exhibitions with other artist-run spaces around the country.

Essex Flowers has assembled an honorable delegation of artists who are core members of alternative spaces in New York City. Each member of Essex Flowers selected one work by one member active in a fellow artist-run organization. The collectives, organizations, and spaces represented here constitute a varied, but ultimately incomplete swathe of New York’s contemporary do-it-yourself artistic sphere. Nevertheless, this exhibition is an exercise in collectivity among collectives, and an experiment in distributed exhibition-making. This self-organized project foregrounds the tensions between the individual and collectivization. Necessity, growth, and precarity emerge as central themes.

Artists and Affiliated Spaces: Yevgenia Baras (Regina Rex), Zach Steinman (The Boom Boom Room), Jason Osborne (Off White Columns), Max Schumann (Printed Matter), Allison Wade (Crystal Flowers), Lauren Clay (Won Eh), Holly Coulis (106 Green), JJ Manford (Underdonk), Nathan Gwynne (helper, Constance), Eric Hibit (Ortega y Gasset Projects), Ala Dehghan (17ESSEX)

Image caption: Eric Hibit, Yellow Anthurium, 2018, acrylic on panel, 20 x 16 in. Courtesy of the artist.