GUEST OF A GUEST
The Hole Tribeca
July 23 – August 28, 2025
86 Walker Street
New York, NY 10013
In the exhibition Guest of a Guest, The Hole gallery reimagines the summer group show as a curatorial chain letter, one where the power to select, shape, and share is passed along from hand to hand. Instead of appointing a single curator, the gallery invited nine individuals from across the art world—artists, collectors, gallerists, and cultural connectors—to each select an artist, forming a web of relationships that is as much about creative trust as it is about taste. The result is a lively, layered exhibition that resists a singular voice in favor of a constellation of perspectives.
This multiplicity is not just structural; it’s thematic. The show loosely centers on gatherings—dinner parties, afterparties, communal scenes—and the artworks often double as snapshots of togetherness. Jonni Cheatwood’s ambiguous birthday bash, Scout Zabinski’s stylized luncheon, and Noa Ironic’s raucous poker night all evoke moments of closeness, chaos, or quiet tension. Adèle Aproh’s army of self-portraits and Colin Radcliffe’s lounging figures stretch the idea of community into something stranger and more performative.
Curator-artist relationships shine through: Julianna Vezzetti’s selection of Michael McGregor’s Parisian café scene, or Natasha Schlesinger’s pick of Mark Frygell’s Hole Gathering, a visual pun that encircles a black void—a sly nod to the gallery’s name and perhaps to the exhibition’s own logic of organized disorganization.
By placing so many curators at the helm, Guest of a Guest becomes less about unified vision and more about curatorial hospitality. The act of inviting—a +1, an unexpected voice—transforms the exhibition into a social experiment about trust, influence, and the permeability of art world roles. The result isn’t always seamless, but that’s part of its charm. In a time when the word “curated” is often diluted to mean merely “selected,” this show reminds us of the deeper meaning: curation as care, connection, and collective authorship.
At The Hole’s other locations, summer programming continues with Herbivore at 312 Bowery, a vibrant group exhibition exploring plant life through sculpture, painting, and installation, and Reflections at 86 Walker Street, where Mathew Zefeldt’s meticulously rendered paintings translate simulated video game landscapes into analog meditations on repetition and digital perception.
Herbivore
The Hole
18 July – 31 August 2025
312 Bowery
New York, NY 10012
At The Hole’s Bowery location, Herbivore presents a wide-ranging survey of contemporary artists engaging with the botanical world as both material and metaphor. This summer group exhibition brings together over two dozen artists whose work engages plant life as both subject and metaphor. From swelling resin blossoms to tongue-in-cheek weed sculptures, the show presents a riotous and multifaceted exploration of flora across contemporary media.
Floral exuberance greets visitors at the door, where British duo Graphic Rewilding has filled the gallery’s front windows with vibrant vinyl irises. Inside, Ben Godward’s hulking resin flower and Hanna Hansdotter’s bulbous blown-glass vases set the tone: tactile, luminous, and a little excessive. Barry McGee’s animatronic tree sculpture scrawls graffiti on the walls, a mischievous hybrid of the organic and the urban.
Throughout the exhibition, the botanical serves as a versatile metaphor, symbolizing sensuality, absurdity, history, and decay. Hein Koh’s ceramic sculpture sprouts a spiky cactus from a steaming broccoli pot, while Ant Hamlyn’s Sporegasm erupts with clusters of plush mushrooms, teetering between the cute and the grotesque. Sophie Parker, ever the horticultural stylist, integrates live plants into a sculptural arrangement that prompts viewers to reconsider what constitutes a “finished” object.
