Aicon Art drops the disputed name, rebrands as AINA Gallery
The move to Chelsea comes as the founder's brother alleges in court that the two fought over who would keep their shared gallery space.
Law and Crime
Aicon Art, the New York gallery whose use of the “Aicon” name has been the subject of a lawsuit by its founder’s brother, is dropping the name.
The gallery will reopen as AINA Gallery at 550 West 29th Street in Chelsea on October 1. It will leave the Great Jones Street building it shared with its rival, the gallery said in an Instagram statement.
“After nearly twenty years on Great Jones Street, we are delighted to announce a new chapter for the gallery: Aicon Art is becoming AINA Gallery and moving to Chelsea,” the statement said.
On its old Instagram account, the gallery said it “will no longer function under this name and account” and directed followers to a new handle, @ainagallery.ny.
The new name comes from the Persian and South Asian word for “mirror,” founder Prajit Dutta said in the statement.
“AINA Gallery was conceived as a space of clarity and synthesis,” he said, calling it “a looking glass through which non-Western modern and contemporary practices can be encountered and celebrated in New York.”
Paid subscribers can read the court documents used in this reporting.
Court Documents: Aicon legal matters amid Aicon Art rebrand
Records from the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York and Kings counties.
Adam Schrader
The gallery said the Chelsea space was designed by StudioMDA and that AINA would “continue to champion South Asian modern masters alongside contemporary artists from South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and their global diasporas.”
The announcement did not mention the litigation between Dutta and his brother, Projjal Dutta, who runs a separate gallery, Aicon Contemporary, at the same Manhattan address.
Urgent Matter previously reported that Projjal Dutta and Aicon Contemporary sued Prajit Dutta and Aicon Art in October 2025 over the “Aicon” name. Aicon Art answered with counterclaims accusing Aicon Contemporary of offering forged works attributed to the Indian modernists M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza.
Brothers’ Aicon Gallery lawsuit expands with forgery claims
Projjal Dutta and his Aicon Contemporary gallery sued his brother Prajit Dutta and his gallery, Aicon Art, in October over the Aicon name.
Adam Schrader
The brothers were once equal owners of Aicon Gallery, a business they ran together at 35 Great Jones Street before splitting around 2019, court records show. Projjal Dutta then formed Aicon Contemporary and Prajit Dutta formed Aicon Art. The two agreed to keep sharing the space.
In a sworn affirmation filed July 9 in a separate contract case between the galleries, Projjal Dutta described the move as the outcome of a fight over who would keep that space.
He said his brother pursued the lawsuit to financially drain him and hold onto the gallery, “essentially becoming the successor to Aicon Gallery.”
“While Aicon Art has since announced that it has found a new space, that was not his original intention,” Projjal Dutta said in the filing. “The question of who would retain the space was for some time a point of contention.”
Aicon Art, the plaintiff in the contract case, claims Aicon Contemporary owes it more than $230,000 in shared business expenses, including $63,000 tied to the sale of a painting by the artist Salman Toor, records show.
The court dismissed that case in November 2025 over a missed filing deadline. Aicon Art has moved to revive it, and Projjal Dutta has asked the court to dismiss it permanently, records show.
On September 8, both sides told the court they had made “significant progress in the resolution of the issues between them” and pushed the next court date to October 30.
The contract fight has run for years. Denying both sides’ bids to win outright in June 2024, Justice Arlene P. Bluth wrote that it was “an understatement to characterize the instant dispute as a mess."
Bluth described the parties as “feuding brothers” who “seem destined to fight about every possible expense incurred by their two companies.”
The brothers are also fighting in Brooklyn, where Harry Hutchison, who co-owns Aicon Art with Prajit Dutta, sued Projjal Dutta over an April 11, 2025, confrontation at 35 Great Jones Street.
Hutchison said he was assaulted and seeks $2.5 million, and he has identified Prajit Dutta — his business partner and the defendant’s brother — as a witness to the assault, records show.
Projjal Dutta denies assaulting Hutchison and has said Hutchison made false statements to police that led to his arrest three days later. In May, Justice Aaron D. Maslow denied Projjal Dutta’s bid for a default win in that case, Urgent Matter previously reported.
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