On June 3rd, our popular Downtown Dealers conversation series was held at A Hug From The Art World in Chelsea, where Independent’s founder Elizabeth Dee spoke with the gallery’s founder, Adam Cohen, Will Leung, founder of Long Story Short, and Leo Fitzpatrick of Ruttkowski;68. Their discussion explored the idea of community building in today’s distracted and difficult environment, whether social media helps or hinders artists and galleries, and why everyone in the artworld is a little crazy. Below are highlights from the discussion, edited for brevity and clarity.
Elizabeth Dee: Can you give us an introduction to the gallery, your story?
Adam Cohen: I never really refer to it as a gallery, but it really is a gallery, I suppose. I've been in the art world for nearly 30 years. I worked for five years as a schlepper at Christie’s, downstairs in the basement in London, and then ended up working a little bit for Haunch of Venison in London before moving to New York. I worked at Gagosian for 20 years.
Elizabeth Dee: How was that?
Adam Cohen: I loved working at Gagosian. The reason why I am in this building is because my office was on 21st Street and this building became available and I live across the street. So I said, "Okay, I'll take it." Larry called me two years later and said, "Oh, I heard you opened the gallery." And the next thing he said was, "How can we collaborate?" Joel Mesler made a drawing on my desk at my Gagosian office that said: "I just need a hug from the art world." That is how the name was born. And I just stuck with it.
Elizabeth Dee: Leo, you’ve also got an interesting origin story.
Leo Fitzpatrick: I came to the art world a little differently. I grew up a skateboard kid, basically a high school dropout. When I was about 14, I met a guy named Larry Clark, who was making a movie called Kids that I ended up starring in when I was 16. So, through Larry, I was introduced to art. I grew up with Ryan McGinley and Dan Colen; they were also from New Jersey and were skateboarders. Basically, a lot of my friends were visual artists and I was the out-of-work actor. And there were a lot of late nights and discussions about art and culture in general. On one of those late nights, me and Nate Lowman and Hanna Liden said, "Why don't we just start a gallery? There's so much stuff we want to see that other galleries aren't doing."
We had this idea to do a storefront window project that was called Home Alone because the artwork was basically by itself—there was no desk, there was no one staffing it, but it was open 24 hours. It was on Franklin Street underneath Nate Lowman and Dan Colen's studio. At some point, we were offered a storefront on Forsyth that used to be the old Half Gallery and that became Home Alone Two. Our motto was: “The artist is always right, even if it's wrong.” We let the artists do whatever they wanted. No art was for sale that I remember. It was just a project space for experimentation. So the artists loved us. Their galleries loved us because we let them do the weird shit so the galleries didn't have to deal with it.
After about four years, Marlborough Gallery asked me to run a project space out of their gallery. That was the first time I had health insurance and a paycheck, which was nice. And also learned the foundation of consignment agreements, things like that. That collapsed during COVID.
And so, I just decided to go back to my roots and start another gallery, which would become Public Access, first on Saint Marks and then down on Henry Street, which has a really great scene. And then I decided to quit the gallery business and walk away, which was really nice. But I got recruited by a gallery called Ruttkowski;68, where I currently work.
"Let's be honest, there is no secondary market for any living artist anymore. That is the state of the art market we're currently in."
–Adam Cohen
Photography by Jackie Molloy.
Will Leung: I grew up skateboarding, and was a high school dropout as well. Never went to school for art history whatsoever. Throughout my teenage years, I was considered a fixer. I could get you anything you need in New York for a certain price. I decided to move to Vegas for six months. I wouldn’t call it professional gambling. I didn't have to spend money. The Paris Hotel put us up for six months. I just gambled straight through.
I got a phone call from a friend saying, "Hey, I got a job offer for you. We can hire you as a temp." They worked at Price Waterhouse Cooper, one of the top three accounting companies in the world. So I flew back, 27 years old, and worked there for four years, got hired full-time.
Then I started working at a startup down in Soho, made some money, then decided I needed to do something different that people don't understand. So what do most people not understand? Art. I showed up in Chelsea on a Wednesday night—this was the early 2000s maybe. Everybody was opening at the same time. You could walk down four blocks and everybody was open. Nobody does this anymore and that's very sad. I became a collector for 10, 15 years. I traveled the world. Every single month, besides July and August, I went to a fair.
And then, during COVID, I was, like, "What am I doing? I'm just buying art, like 15 paintings a month. How am I helping the artists?" There was a very good friend of mine, Bill Brady. He had a gallery in the East Village called ATM. At that time, Ellie Rines at 56 Henry said, "Hey, there's a space next door, you should do a project." And I'm, like, "I don't want to fucking be a dealer. There's no way I want to do this.”
Elizabeth Dee: Why didn't you want to be a dealer at that point?
Will Leung: Because I was happy being a collector and every time I dealt with a dealer it was very painful. Why are you not selling me something? There was artwork that I couldn't buy from a gallery for seven years and I still haven't bought anything from them. They didn't know who I was. They thought, “Well he’s just the flipper.” I had bought 400 artworks and sold maybe two paintings. I was not really flipping anything. I should have, but I didn't.
I had met Bill years ago and I liked his program. He was dealing out of Kansas City and Miami. So we were talking during COVID. Galleries were closing. I always go against the stream, so I said, "Let's just open the gallery.” He was, like, “What, are you crazy?" Fast forward five years later, he passed away, and then I had to open a second gallery because his wife wanted me to buy the name.
Then I opened Long Story Short, because I feel like every artist should just be able to show what they want to show. So we call it a short story because I do one show and I hope that they have a longer story for their career.
Elizabeth Dee: How do you think your gallery programs have been impacted by the disbursement of artists communities, now that artists can't all afford to live in New York City and things are so expensive?
Will Leung: I think every artist is very competitive in their own community and I think that's where a lot of times, I encourage community building.
Photography by Jackie Molloy.
Leo Fitzpatrick: The older I get, the more I choose to work with artists that work outside of the art world and outside of the studio practice. A lot of kids come from the punk world or graffiti, and, for me, all the [distinction between] high-brow and low-brow—I don’t give a shit about any of that anymore. I just want to find things that are interesting, that young people are looking for as a representation of themselves.
The artists that I work with, some are very outside the system—I have to find them a studio, I have to buy their paint, I have to buy their canvas. I basically have to do almost everything except make the work. That’s a very old school mentality, but that’s for some people the way it works, you help them out and make it as easy as possible and then they deliver the goods. Is that tricky? Yes. Do they understand that I have a kid and two jobs and other things going on? Not always, but for me that’s sort of the job I was given, to make these things that seem very difficult happen seamlessly.
Elizabeth Dee: And are your artists seeking community in the gallery?
Leo Fitzpatrick: No, they have their own community. If anything, I'm fucking up their community. I’m the old guy at the punk show. I think when the openings happen and they see their community being welcomed in, that's reassuring for them.
Elizabeth Dee: How do you feel the notion of community has changed in regard to galleries in New York City? Do you feel there is still a gallery community, like in Chelsea, or has it changed too much?
Adam Cohen: I was over in Chelsea simply because I had to be, geographically, because I was working at Gagosian, where people came to you. That is totally different than having your own gallery. The art world has definitely changed. No question. We're in a moment now which is completely different than it's ever been. And I actually don't think it'll ever go back to the way it was. To me, community is why I opened the gallery—it’s going to meet the artist that I'm doing a show with, spending time in the studio with them, one-on-one. That is the greatest thrill and excitement there is out of any of it. It's almost like therapy. It's like a friendship, where your true friends in life are the most complicated and difficult. Those types of relationships are the ones that are the most rewarding because they're challenging.
Photography by Jackie Molloy.
Elizabeth Dee: Do you think social media has made people confuse audience with community?
Leo Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Whenever I'm speaking to a younger artist about Instagram, there's something fairly simple to me. If you put up a picture of a painting you made and it gets five likes and you put up a picture of a painting you make and it gets 500 likes, what are you going to lean towards making more of? Be careful of that sort of online audience and the way it sways what you're making. It's too real time, it's too easy for people to just hit a “like” button. I'm always telling them, “Make sure to talk to your friends and have studio visits and engage in the actual world.” I've been nearly beaten up over telling people I don't like their work, but that was a real life experience. Somebody said, "I heard you don't like my work." And I said, "Yeah, I don't." And they tried to beat me up. That was so much better than [social media].
Elizabeth Dee: There's something about it that makes you feel like you're more connected to people than you actually are. And galleries are so analog. It's all about being there. How do galleries work together toward those common goals to get people focused around certain programs and events?
Leo Fitzpatrick: I feel like the state of the world has a lot to do with things. Basically, everybody's just trying to keep the lights on and keep their sanity, and getting together with a community is almost like a guilty pleasure you can't afford to give your time to, even though it would be therapeutic and nice, you're so busy stressing about a million other things. And then you also have the problem with space. Where do these communities get together? But if you can get 12 alcoholics in a room, you can find a space for 12 art dealers.
Will brought up Ellie Rines earlier. She's a community builder. I don't think she would consider herself as such, but she's really incredible at having this presence that you want to be around.
Will Leung: I opened the gallery because Ellie said, "You should do this." I believed in her vision. We have a whole Henry Street group chat and everybody's like, "Oh, I'm opening on Tuesday. I'm opening on Friday." My response is, “Whatever day Ellie's opening, I'm opening at the same time.” If we coordinate one day of opening, it would work so well. But nobody wants to do that.
At the peak of my experience [in 2022–23], it was a 95% sell-through, one show a month, and I did that for two and a half years. And that was incredible. I had people yelling at me, like, "Why can't you sell me something?" And I'm like, "I only get eight paintings.” Nowadays, somebody comes into the gallery, I'm like, "I'll sell you anything you want. You want 20% discount, I'll deliver this to you." I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The last year and a half has been a struggle for a lot of people.
Elizabeth Dee: People have described it as like someone just turned the tap off from one day to the next.
Adam Cohen: In November 2024, I did a political show and I opened the week after Trump won. After that was the kiss of death. I went from selling 80–90% to 10–15% of the show. I had to put all the money I made in the first three years back into the business last year and I can't afford to do that again this year. The thing is, we do this because we're addicted to it, I think is the problem. I think that's the reality.
Will Leung: We like spending money.
Photography by Jackie Molloy.
Adam Cohen: No one in their right mind would go and buy any of this and then put it in storage. Let's be honest, there is no secondary market for any living artist anymore. That is the state of the art market we're currently in. Why should there be? It wouldn't make sense in a way. If someone's been dead 30 years and there's a shortage of the thing, then I understand the object being a rarefied thing and that is why someone is putting that level of value on it, because of scarcity. There's no such thing as scarcity in the contemporary art market. When people say they produce too much work, I disagree; I think they should make more. Try and cash in while you can.
Will Leung: But you still have some kind of monetary value.
Adam Cohen: Why would you buy any art if you wanted to make money? It’s the worst business in the world to do that. It's a miracle that we're able to do the deal to start with. I mean, I honestly feel that way. And I love the thing. The way I sell art is purely to be enthusiastic about the thing. My point being, we wouldn't be doing it unless we're interested in the thing. That's the community level part of it.
Leo Fitzpatrick: It’s like a community of insane people.
Adam Cohen: Correct, in the art business [we’re all] mentally ill, alcoholics, criminals.
Leo Fitzpatrick: When people start talking money, I totally tune out. One of the only people who has ever bought art from me was Will and he fucked up my whole program by opening a gallery.
My gallery was called Public Access because I wanted it to feel like a skateboard shop or a record shop. And it was for kids, it was supposed to be their entry point, because when I went into galleries, the artwork, whether or not it was for sale—that didn't even matter to me. It was so out of my league to even think about owning art. It was just cool to be there and to not be run out of there.
So I was never good at selling art. I got another job to pay for my gallery. Some people buy Rolexes or cars or go to therapy. I choose to do this with my money, and I've actually met younger people who say, “Your galleries inspired me to open a gallery.” Young people are so insecure and it's hard to feel accepted in the world. So if you can provide a space for them and their community to grow, then you've done something kind of cool.
A lot of artists will literally come to me and say, “This work sucks. You should show my work.” That's how they approach me, which is insane. It will never work. I say, “What other galleries do you go to? What other programs do you like? What other artists do you follow? You should really find a gallery that's consistently showing work you like and try to show there because chances are you belong there.”
I think people just want space and they don't care where it is. They just want the ability to express themselves and I completely understand that. Or just start your own gallery. I would get these kids to work for me off the street. But I always paid them. And I would always let them curate a show once a year, just so they feel a part of this thing. Other galleries do that too and I think little things like that actually help a lot. It's the same vibe as a really good bookstore or anything where people are not feeling rushed out the door or like they're being watched. Come hang out.
Photography by Jackie Molloy.
Adam Cohen: I wanted people to come and hang out here [at A Hug From The Art World], have lunch here. Someone was doing their homework upstairs today in the gallery. I sit at the front desk. I want to be part of it. I like the community. I want to talk to anyone about the art, that's what actually makes me tick. Unfortunately it doesn't pay the bills, but at least it creates the energy for when the right person comes in, then you're hyped up about it.
Leo Fitzpatrick: When I first started the gallery, that was all super late night alcohol-fueled idealism. We were young, we had the energy. As you get older, it obviously gets harder. I basically came here from a soccer game. My kid's upstairs watching YouTube. I'm trying to do this talk. We all get older and have different things. I love to believe that there are kids still staying up late at night and engaging with each other and not just looking at the phones, even though that's obviously part of it. I hope that I've just aged out of community. I really hope that it still exists and that I'm just not cool enough to know about it.