The past week has seen some fairly dramatic developments in the world of art galleries. Last week, ARTnews reported that JTT gallery, which had been in operation in New York for 11 years, is closing, and earlier this week, we reported that the artist Jeffrey Gibson has sued Kavi Gupta gallery in Chicago to the tune of $600,000.
Now comes news that Malin Gallery, which opened in New York eight years ago, has shut its doors. Both its headquarters in New York’s Chelsea art district and an Aspen branch in Colorado are officially closed.
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A former employee with knowledge of the gallery’s finances said that as of this past May, Malin owed money to multiple vendors, including a shipper and a caterer, and to artists who showed there. Reached by email, Barry T. Malin, the gallery’s founder and owner, denied this saying, “We do not not owe any money to them. In fact, they owe money to us.”
Jesse Krimes, an artist who showed with Malin, left the gallery earlier this month to join Jack Shainman Gallery.
One artist who asked not to be named and who is currently owed in excess of $9,000 said attempts to get paid over the last three months have involved a wire transfer that did not go through and a bounced check. Malin said that the wire transfer issue was due to a notice of possible fraud and that he did not recall a bounced check.
“Due to a series of unfortunate and unforeseen events, I regret to inform you that Malin Gallery is winding down and I will no longer represent individual artists,” Barry T. Malin wrote in an email to artists that was reviewed by ARTnews.
“We have engaged a consulting firm to help us with the gallery’s closure,” he wrote. “They are handling accounts payable during this process, and I have instructed them that prompt payment of any outstanding balances to artists is the priority. There are a few artworks in the gallery. In those cases, I will be in contact with you to set up direct return to you according to your preferences.”
Malin opened a gallery in Aspen in 2021 when a spate of New York galleries opened pop-ups there. Unlike the others, he returned in 2022. This past February, he announced plans to make that space permanent, however from June 29 to July 29, the space was occupied by a popup for LA-based fashion company Peri.A. The space is currently vacant.
Malin Gallery opened as Burning in Water on 10th Avenue in Chelsea in 2015 and has shown artists such as Borinquen Gallo, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Elizabeth Catlett, and Serge Attukwei Clottey. In 2018 the gallery expanded to two more spaces in Chelsea, at 507 West 27th Street.
In recent years the gallery became known for showing Krimes, a formerly incarcerated artist who was a breakout stars of Nicole Fleetwood’s MoMA PS1 exhibition “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” which also included Malin-represented artist Russell Craig. The gallery’s most recent shows, solo exhibitions for Angela China and Foad Satterfield in New York and Aspen, respectively, both closed in May.