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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFor the past two years, Sotheby\u2019s has hosted benefit auctions to raise money for the Ali Forney Center, a nonprofit organization in New York that aims to protect LGBTQ+ youth from homelessness. This year, art adviser Stephen Truax, a former director at Cheim & Read who helped organized last year\u2019s auction, is partnering with David Zwirner Gallery on a similar endeavor, with proceeds again benefiting Ali Forney, which provides housing, meals, healthcare, and career training to queer youth.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe exhibition, titled \u201cToward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center,\u201d opens Tuesday evening at David Zwirner\u2019s 19th Street space and will be on view through Saturday, November 1. Compared to the previous iterations at Sotheby\u2019s\u2014which each included\u00a0six artworks by six artists\u2014\u201cToward the Light\u201d is much more robust. Truax and his collaborators at the gallery gathered 41 artworks by 38 contemporary artists. (Wolfgang Tillmans, James Welling, and Roberto Gil de Montes contributed two works each.) <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe brought in well over a million dollars in material consignments,\u201d Truax told ARTnews, noting that the exhibition\u2019s affiliation with Zwirner this year attracted \u201chigh-level artists who believe in the project and wanted to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tA handful of the participating artists\u2014Tillmans, Welling, Joe Bradley, Marlene Dumas, Marcel Dzama, and Suzan Frecon\u2014are represented by Zwirner, but the rest are not affiliated with the gallery. Several of this year\u2019s artists participated in previous iterations of the event, including Katherine Bradford, Ilana Savdie, Jenna Gribbon, and Doron Langberg, who organized the 2023 exhibition at Sotheby\u2019s and is a close friend of Truax\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\n\tTruax told ARTnews that the switch from Sotheby\u2019s to a gallery environment allows for more control over who the artworks sell to, and for how much. \u201cYou want to maintain price consistency and build confidence in the market,\u201d Truax said. Two-thirds of the artists donated their work outright, with all the proceeds going to Ali Forney; the rest chose a 50-50 split with the nonprofit. Among the biggest names in \u201cToward the Light\u201d are Julie Mehretu, Marlene Dumas, Jenna Gribbon, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Simmons, and Stanley Whitney.<\/p>\n
\n\tOne thing Truax wants to make clear: this isn\u2019t your typical benefit exhibition full of leftover inventory and \u201cbad works on paper,\u201d he said, adding \u201cfor me, it\u2019s really important for this to be a win-win-win, for the artists and the charity and the gallery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBelow are highlights from the exhibition.<\/p>\n
\tAnthony Cudahy, Ian holding a pearl, 2025<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tSean Scully, 8.5.25, 2025<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tStanley Whitney, Untitled, 2025<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tDike Blair, Untitled, 2024<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tAndrew Brischler, Self-Portrait (as The Bride), 2025<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tPeter Shear, Listing, 2025<\/p>\n
\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tLudovic Nkoth, Pinky Promise, 2025<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tMarina Adams, 16x12_171, 2023<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tJim Hodges, an other dimension, 2025<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\tJulia Rommel, Varsity, 2025<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past two years, Sotheby\u2019s has hosted benefit auctions to raise money for the Ali Forney Center,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,19406,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-106687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-david-zwirner","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}