David Zwirner Gallery Brings Its Artists—and Its Beautiful Books—to LA
Amid a golden age of contemporary art in Los Angeles, we explore the gallery’s timely arrival and its much-admired book publishing.
Exterior of David Zwirner’s galleries located at 612 and 616 North Western Avenue, Los Angeles. Photo by Elon Schoenholz. Courtesy of David Zwirner.
In mid-2023, David Zwirner Gallery—known for its famed artist roster as well as its book publishing arm, David Zwirner Books—welcomed guests into its new location in Los Angeles. The opening’s overflowing turnout included Hollywood art world figures like actor-collector Owen Wilson, art book publisher Benedikt Taschen, artist Barbara Kruger, and gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, among throngs of others in attendance to celebrate yet another heavyweight gallery establishing a West Coast outpost. Others include Sprüth Magers, Hauser & Wirth, Karma, Pace, Marian Goodman, and Lisson—not to mention the Frieze International Art Fair, which arrived in LA in 2019 in acknowledgment of the city’s already robust art scene with deep roots dating to the 1960s.
The crowd outside the opening of David Zwirner's 612 and 616 North Western Avenue galleries in Los Angeles on May 23, 2023, which opened with exhibitions by Stan Douglas and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Photo by Keith Berson. Courtesy of David Zwirner.
David Zwirner Gallery’s own roots in LA date back to its inception in 1993, having represented artists who live and work in LA from the very beginning. “The gallery has a long history with Los Angeles,” says Zwirner of the new location. “It is a city that I love for its vibrancy and creative spirit, and I am so excited for our new spaces there.”
The light-filled trifecta of exhibition spaces in Melrose Hill, renovated by Selldorf Architects (longtime friend Annabelle Selldorf designed Zwirner’s first SoHo gallery and many others) joins existing locations in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong, where rotating exhibitions present the works of artists such as Gerhard Richter, Yayoi Kusama, Luc Tuymans, Kerry James Marshall, and Wolfgang Tillmans.
“The gallery has a long history with Los Angeles. It is a city that I love for its vibrancy and creative spirit, and I am so excited for our new spaces there.”
Exhibitions at David Zwirner Gallery’s new Los angeles location have presented works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Stan Douglas, Rose Wylie, and Franz West. (Top left) Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, 2021. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen. © Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner. (Top right) Stan Douglas, ISDN, 2022 (still from two-channel video installation). © Stan Douglas. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner. (Bottom left) Rose Wylie, Spindle and Cover Girl, 2022. © Rose Wylie. Photo by Jack Hems. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. (Bottom right) Franz West, Three Times the Same, 1998. © Archiv Franz West, © Estate Franz West. Courtesy Archiv Franz West, Estate Franz West, and David Zwirner.
Also inside the new LA space is a bookshop showcasing the publishing of David Zwirner Books, the gallery’s standalone publishing arm that launched in 2015 to give life, in printed and bound form, to artist-led works or projects inspired by the gallery’s stable of creatives. In the process, they have given book lovers some of today’s most artfully imagined publishing. A few of us at Booktique will never forget the first time we laid eyes—and hands—on one of Zwirner’s early publications: the fabulously chunky Donald Judd Writings, a still-popular work published in 2016. Today, as ever, Zwirner’s book offerings range from the boldly packaged (see William Eggleston: The Outlands, Selected Works, a commandingly oversized paperback) to the perspective-shifting (behold the paint stick drawings in Richard Serra: 2022) to the editorially inventive (the Seeing Shakespeare series is our favorite kind of mash-up), to the luxuriously tactile (you’ll want to hug the beautifully blush-hued Rose Wylie: Which One), and the joy-inducing (see the jubilantly designed Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray for Love)—and now even include journals (Ruth Asawa: The Journal) and children’s books (such as Meet the Lithographer).
(Books from L-R) William Eggleston: The Outlands, Selected Works (2022). Richard Serra: 2022 (2023). William Shakespeare × Marcel Dzama: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2021). Rose Wylie: Which One (2023). Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray for Love (2020). Ruth Asawa: The Journal (2023). Meet the Lithographer (2023).
Zwirner’s world comes alive in these volumes, as do the works and thoughts of these revered artists. Bring them home and they will beckon to you from your coffee table, offering ongoing glimpses or deep reads through pages that let you revisit a show or catch one you missed—or ruminate on Raymond Pettibon’s waves at your leisure, as we’ve been doing with Point Break, the Zwirner tome that’s currently on our coffee table. Peek inside via the pages below, then head to DavidZwirnerBooks.com to explore their full selection.
David Zwirner Gallery. 612 and 616 North Western Ave., L.A., 310-777-1993, davidzwirner.com.
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About the book
Point Break: Raymond Pettibon, Surfers and Waves
By Raymond Pettibon