The Hole NYC Founder Kathy Grayson on Her Gallery’s New Tribeca Space

When The Hole NYC opened the doors to artist Eric Shaw's bright, balanced and optimistic show Pure Mode (the inaugural exhibit at their new Tribeca location), there was a line of people waiting to step in. More than 10 years after the debut of their beloved Bowery location, The Hole welcomed people to their Tribeca destination just two weeks after founder Kathy Grayson signed the lease. It wasn’t a mad dash, however; it was a path toward new ideas and explorations with the gallery’s roster of artists. And, in many ways, it was a remedy to a gallery culture that shrunk substantially under the pandemic.

“We had been trying to open a space in LA,” Grayson tells us at the Tribeca space with her dog, Bertie. “We were trying to negotiate a lease in this gigantic building, near the gallery of my old boss Jeffrey [Deitch]. Before signing the lease, the pandemic shut everything down. I tried to push it through. I even went to LA in July and October to find some way to make it happen.” Unfortunately, it couldn’t come together.

“It was part of my 10-year plan to have two galleries,” she continues. “It’s good for a million reasons: getting into art fairs, retaining top talent, keeping your own creative energy and your creative interests by having a new structure to enact exhibitions in.” With the Bowery doing well, Grayson felt it was time to expand.

Read the full interview here

View Eric Shaw Pure Mode here