Reena Spaulings New York, b. 2004

In 2004, the New York–based Reena Spaulings emerged from the day-to-day operations of Reena Spaulings Fine Art, a gallery founded by John Kelsey and Emily Sundblad on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. That same year, Spaulings was introduced through an eponymous novel as a fictional young woman navigating the New York art scene of the early 2000s. Parallel to this literary appearance, the gallery became a site of active commercial and artistic exchange, fostering collaborations with artists including John Kelsey, Emily Sundblad, and Jutta Koether. Spaulings’ practice operates through deliberate indeterminacy, challenging fixed notions of authorship and destabilizing conventional hierarchies and divisions of labor within the art world.

 

Reena Spaulings has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2017); the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2008); and Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich (2007).

 

The work has also been presented extensively in group exhibitions at leading international institutions, including Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018); Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Geneva (2017); Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2016); Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2015); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); FRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Bordeaux (2013); MD 72, Berlin (2013); CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux (2011); Indipendenza Studio, Rome (2011); Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (2010); Tate Modern, London (2009); and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2009), among others.

 

Works by Reena Spaulings are held in significant public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; FRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Bordeaux; and the Charles Riva Collection, Brussels.