White Columns

About the Gallery
White Columns is New York's oldest alternative art space. Founded in 1970 by Jeffrey Lew and Gordon Matta-Clark as an experimental platform for artists and originally located in SoHo (where it was known as the 112 Workshop/112 Greene Street), the organization was renamed White Columns when it moved to Spring Street in 1979. In 1991, White Columns moved to Christopher Street in the West Village, and in 1998, the gallery relocated to its present address on the border of the West Village and Meat Packing District. White Columns presents an ongoing program of exhibitions, projects, talks, screenings, and events. It is a not-for-profit gallery which is open to the public, free-of-charge, eleven months per year. Over the past forty-six years, hundreds of artists have benefited from early exposure and support at White Columns, including Gordon Matta-Clark, Barry Le Va, Kiki Smith, William Wegman, Sonic Youth, Jack Goldstein, David Wojnarowicz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cady Noland, ACT-UP, and Glenn Ligon, among many others. Since 2005 alone, White Columns has presented the work of more than 500 artists—of all generations—in more than 100 individual exhibitions and projects.

About the Presentation
White Columns will present paintings by Huddie Hamper alongside a collection of anonymous erotic drawings at this year’s edition of Independent.

Huddie Hamper (b. 1999) is a figurative oil painter, printmaker and musician. In his work, Hamper aims to communicate the beauty – and sometimes darkness – that is in the world around us. He does not wish to prescribe meaning to the themes in his work, but to let the painting talk for itself. 

The anonymous erotic pencil drawings were rescued, along with more than 600 others, from a dumpster on Grove Street in Manhattan nearly fifteen years ago. None of the drawings are signed and no reliable identifying material was found along with them. They're all the same size and, with few exceptions, all on the same quality paper. Some of the drawings appear to have been based on live models, but the great majority return again and again to variations on a slim, boyish, masculine ideal that the artist couldn't get out of his head. The presentation is accompanied by a short text from the writer and curator Vince Aletti.

White Columns will also launch the 2025 White Columns Print Portfolio which includes five new screen prints by Ann Craven, Rachel Harrison, Sam McKinniss, Arthur Simms and Tabboo!.