Lomex opens Las Vegas sister space as Ginny on Frederick makes U.S. debut

London’s Ginny on Frederick has organized its first U.S. gallery show at New York’s Lomex, which recently opened a sister space in Las Vegas.

The group show, titled “The Bed Sitting Room,” opened January 10 and runs through February 14. It features work by 10 artists, including Rebecca Ackroyd, Alexandra Metcalf and Hamish Pearch, among others.

Ginny on Frederick has increased its international profile over the past year, participating for the first time in Art Basel and Art Basel Paris, and receiving two prizes at Frieze London, according to the gallery.

The show takes its title from the 1969 film The Bed Sitting Room, a dark comedy about people trying to live normal lives after a nuclear apocalypse. The show borrows that idea, focusing on how people or objects might continue everyday routines after things fall apart.

“Having studied in the U.S. and always loving coming back, New York has a familiarity as well as inspiration. However, I'm not currently looking to expand beyond London yet, perhaps a few more fruitful trips here and I'll say something different,” Ginny on Frederick’s Freddie Powell told Urgent Matter. “Maybe a trip to Vegas first?”

Powell said the gallery previously participated in fairs in New York, which gave it “a sense of the city and its audiences.” But the show allows the gallery to build a New York presence without a commitment to a permanent expansion.

“But this show allows us to show work thoughtfully on our own terms,” Powell said. “Many of the artists are London-based, and bringing this work to New York gave us the chance to present it in a considered, deliberate way, starting to establish a presence without rush.”

Powell said the show was specifically conceived for New York and for Lomex, and that working with Alexander Shulan “key to how it came together.”

“Freddie and I were in touch over the course of a year in the planning stage and we both had certain artists that we spoke about being enthusiastic to show in the context of the gallery,” Shulan said.

Powell said he attended the Rhode Island School of Design with artists Kye Christensen-Knowles and Phoebe Nesgos, whose work is in the show. Christensen-Knowles and Nesgos recently had solo shows at Lomex New York.

“Having those friendships, along with my ongoing one with Alex, whose work with Lomex has been a constant inspiration for Ginny, made this collaboration feel immediate and really generative,” Powell said.

Shulan said he has been interested in working with his peers to mount international projects outside the art fair model.

“In lending my space to Ginny, we decided to work together collaboratively as dealers on both the curation and the placement of the works, which really fosters a much more positive feeling than the competitive and high-stress environment of an art fair,” Shulan said.

Powell said he hopes the collaboration signals to artists, collectors and peers a commitment to long-term thinking and shared values rather than quick visibility.

“The collaboration reflects an interest in dialogue, trust, and working with artists and peers in ways that allow ideas to develop over time,” he said. “I always want to work in ways that are positioned collaboratively, and less driven by immediacy and more by sustained inquiry.”

Shulan and art advisor Ralph Deluca opened Lomex Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve with the two-artist show “The Dream,” featuring the work of Heji Shin and Mathieu Malouf. That show will run through March 8.

“Las Vegas is a place that historically hasn’t had much of a presence in the formal art world. It’s an incredibly fertile environment—excessive in its visual richness and frivolity. Artists have long used the city as a source of inspiration, but rarely as a place to actually exhibit in a commercial context,” Shulan said.

Shulan said having a space in Las Vegas creates an opportunity to bring New York–based artists “into a completely alien environment” that he said “runs counter to how art in New York has been framed and institutionalized over the past decade.”

“The Vegas project is intentionally separate from the New York gallery. I have a partner in the business, Ralph Deluca, that is separate from the business in New York,” he said. “It has a different base of artists, and we are interested in incubating a local collector base. It isn’t meant to function as a pure extension of what I am doing in New York.”

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