In Chelsea, 26TH AND 10TH brings together contemporary art, collectible design and spatial narratives through a loft exhibition developed by Billy Clark and Valerio Polimeno

26TH AND 10TH and the geography of Chelsea’s art district

Some exhibitions begin with a theme. Others begin with an address. 26TH AND 10TH starts from a precise intersection — and from a district that has shaped New York’s visual culture over three decades. Presented in a loft at 516 West 26th Street, the exhibition developed by BILLYCLARK and Valerio Polimeno enters Chelsea as a cultural condition, not a backdrop.

Chelsea’s transformation is well documented. Former industrial spaces became artist studios, then galleries, then fixed points within the global economy of contemporary art. Collectors, curators, architects and cultural figures moved through in a continuous circuit. The architecture followed: warehouses became white cubes, private lofts and hybrid spaces held between domestic life and public visibility.

26TH AND 10TH occupies that territory. The exhibition takes the structure of an apartment while functioning as a temporary landscape for contemporary art and collectible design. The domestic setting is part of the exhibition language.

Billy Clark and Valerio Polimeno: from art advisory to exhibition-making

The project grew from a collaboration between Billy Clark and Valerio Polimeno following Room with a View, presented during Art Basel Paris in 2025. The New York exhibition extends that research rather than repeating its curatorial model, moving deeper into questions of intimacy, identity and cultural production.

Valerio Polimeno’s practice through _POLIMENO sits at the intersection of art advisory, design consulting and narrative construction. Collections and brands now operate through overlapping mechanisms. Objects carry value through context, relationships and positioning as much as through their own qualities.

Inside 26TH AND 10TH, those ideas translate into spatial decisions.

Contemporary art and collectible design inside the 26TH AND 10TH exhibition

The exhibition brings together works by Agnes Questionmark, Alighiero Boetti, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Danh Vo, Donald Judd, Ernie Barnes, Nan Goldin, Raymond Pettibon, Rick Owens and Tom Wesselmann, among others. The works span periods and artistic languages within a single environment.

The selection follows no logic of historical sequence. Post-war art sits beside photography, design objects and recent interventions. Furniture and artworks share the same visual field. The result is friction — between materials, scales and references — rather than isolated moments of attention.

This format reflects a shift across contemporary exhibitions in New York and beyond. Exhibition design has moved away from neutrality. Architecture participates in the construction of meaning.

Photographs by Mickaël Llorca reinforce this condition. Venetian blinds divide the space and cut across direct sightlines. Objects surface partially, recede, reappear from another angle. The loft reads as layered.

ALL IMAGERY CREDITS: MICKAEL LLORCA