WALTER PRICE, “Races on the sea,” 2020-2021. | © Walter Price, Courtesy the artist
THE GRAND OPENING of David Zwirner’s new Los Angeles location coincides with the gallery’s 30th anniversary. The gallery is marking the milestone with an anniversary exhibition opening May 23. The show features works by everyone on its roster, more than 80 artists and estates. New and historic works will be on view by artists who have worked with the New York-based gallery since its founding in 1993, including Canadian artist Stan Douglas, and the latest to join the gallery Walter Price (b. 1989).
David Zwirner announced its representation of Price today. The representation is in collaboration with Greene Naftali in New York, the artist’s existing gallery. Price will be included in “David Zwirner: 30 Years,” later this month, and his first solo exhibition with the will be presented in November in Los Angeles. This summer, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minn., will mount a solo exhibition of Price. “Walter Price: Pearl Lines” is the most comprehensive museum presentation of his work to date.
Price works at the intersection of figuration and abstraction. Defined by rich and alluring color his images engage with race, history, and socio-cultural awareness. Describing his work, the David Zwirner gallery said Price “sensitively employs an idiom of recurring motifs that traverse the real world and the dream world, memory and collective history: children’s faces in three-quarter profile, partially rendered cars, furniture, animals, and stars slip in and out of his layered pictorial landscapes and are juxtaposed with areas of vivid, contrasting colors, textured brushstrokes, enigmatic inscriptions, and wandering lines.”
“His work, which exudes mystery, playfulness, and a careful attention to process and color, sets him apart among the emerging painters of his generation.” — David Zwirner
Walter Price, 2024. | Photo by Walter Price, Courtesy David Zwirner
BORN IN MACON, GA., Price lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. After serving four years in the U.S. Navy, he used the GI Bill to attend the Art Institute of Washington in Arlington, Va., where he earned a BA degree. Price’s work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in the collections of major institutions. His 2023 painting, “Races on the Sea,” is currently on view in “Objects of Desire,” the collection exhibition (1980s to Present) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Price was featured in the Whitney Biennial in 2019. Solo exhibitions of his work have been featured at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York (2018); Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne, Germany (“Walter Price: Pearl Lines,” 2018); Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, Colo. (“Walter Price: We passed like ships in the night,” 2019); and The Camden Art Centre in London (“Walter Price: Pearl Lines,” 2021). Price titles nearly all of his solo exhibitions Pearl Lines in an effort to emphasize the connections and continuity among his works, many of which are produced in ongoing series.
With multiple locations in New York, spaces in London, Paris, and Hong Kong, and its latest outpost set to open in Los Angeles, David Zwirner is one of the largest galleries in the world. It represents dozens of prominent artists, including several Black artists. Douglas has been with the gallery from the beginning. Chris Ofili joined in 2005. Kerry James Marshall, Michael Armitage, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Oscar Murillo, Raymond Saunders, Portia Zvavahera, and the estates of Noah Davis and Roy DeCarava, are among the artists who began working with the gallery in the past decade.
Zwirner said he first learned of Price through critic and curator Hilton Als. “I was first introduced to Walter Price’s work by Hilton Als in 2022 when he included him in the exhibition “Toni Morrison’s Black Book” here at the gallery. I was immediately struck by Price’s utterly assured and complex compositions,” Zwirner said in a statement.
“His work, which exudes mystery, playfulness, and a careful attention to process and color, sets him apart among the emerging painters of his generation. I am thrilled to be working with him, and am very much looking forward to seeing his painting in conversation with work by other gallery artists at our anniversary exhibition in Los Angeles later this month.” CT
The Walter Price works featured on this page were included in “Toni Morrison’s Black Book” (Jan. 20-Feb. 26, 2022), a group exhibition curated by Hilton Als at David Zwirner in New York
FIND MORE about 52 Walker, the David Zwirner location in Tribeca conceived and led by senior director Ebony L. Haynes, with a focus on conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds, Black artists in particular
WALTER PRICE, “Follow the flame,” 2021 (arylic, gesso, Flashe, and collage on wood panel, 10 x 8 3/8 inches / 25.4 x 21.3 cm). | © Walter Price, Courtesy the artist
WALTER PRICE, “Parables,” 2021. | © Walter Price, Courtesy the artist
Installation view of Walter Price’s work in “Toni Morrison’s Black Book,” curated by Hilton Als, David Zwirner, New York, Jan. 20–Feb. 26, 2022. | Courtesy David Zwirner
BOOKSHELF
“Walter Price: Pearl Lines” is the artist’s first major monograph. The volume accompanied a 2020 exhibition at Camden Art Centre in London and is authored by Darby English.
