This American life: Lisson Gallery opens a spacious new outpost in New York

A base in every city is an asset that only a lucky few can afford. But the contemporary art-focused Lisson Gallery is well on its way, with the opening of a generous New York location earlier this month.

Established in 1967 by Nicholas Logsdail, and having forged the careers of minimal and conceptual greats such as Donald Judd, Daniel Buren, Richard Ryman and Sol LeWitt, Lisson Gallery’s New York outpost joins two existing spaces in London and one in Milan. Nestled under the High Line, the spacious location boasts 4,500 sq ft of exhibition space within a new building designed by studioMDA and Studio Christian Wassmann. Architecturally in tune with its London siblings, the Chelsea gallery mixes polished concrete floors with lots of natural light that floods in through two sprawling skylights above.

‘It has been a long held ambition of Lisson Gallery to consolidate our presence in New York with a permanent exhibition space,’ says Alex Logsdail, the gallery’s international director. ‘By adding to the existing locations, Lisson Gallery New York gives our current roster of 51 artists another key platform to realise their ambitious projects and engage with new collectors, critics and curators, as well as the public.’

The epic space is currently hosting an exhibition by the iconic artist Carmen Herrera, who has been painting for the last 80 years – mostly out of her Manhattan apartment, where she’s lived since 1954. This new body of work is as abstract and minimal as her previous creations, with recurring motifs such as the chevron, chequerboard reversal, quadrangle and triangle forms all getting a look in. A modernist through and through, Herrera’s works serve as the perfect first move for the international gallery.