Verónica López 
March 12, 2020—David Zwirner is pleased to announce On Painting: Art Basel Online, an online-only exhibition available simultaneously in Art Basel’s inaugural Online Viewing Room and at David Zwirner Online. The presentation will be accessible at davidzwirner.com from March 20 through 25, and on Art Basel’s platform from March 18 through 25.
Drawing on Leon Battista Alberti’s 1435 treatise On Painting, this viewing room will highlight artists from the gallery’s program who have helped define figurative painting today by exploring its historical implications, as well as its conceptual dimensions as a medium in the contemporary moment.
On Painting: Art Basel Online will feature sixteen works from David Zwirner artists and estates, many of which have never been on public view and come directly from the artists’ studios. The viewing room will premiere a new work by Jeff Koons that is part of a series created for the artist’s solo exhibition at the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence this fall, alongside new and significant works from Mamma Andersson, Lucas Arruda, Michaël Borremans, Noah Davis, Marlene Dumas, Jeff Koons, Nate Lowman, Kerry James Marshall, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Sigmar Polke, Neo Rauch, Josh Smith, Luc Tuymans, Liu Ye, and Lisa Yuskavage.
On Painting: Art Basel Online will be David Zwirner’s largest viewing room by value to date, with a total value of more than 16 million USD.
This is the gallery’s 54th online viewing room. David Zwirner was the first major gallery to launch an Online Viewing Room, in 2017, and last June introduced its franchise of parallel viewing rooms presented to coincide with major moments on the global art-fair calendar, with Art Basel in June 2019. Since then, the gallery has presented successful online viewing rooms of fair-caliber work to coincide with Frieze London and Art Basel Miami Beach. The gallery looks forward to presenting On Painting: Art Basel Online to the Art Basel online audience and to David Zwirner’s global audience of collectors.
“This ambitious presentation underscores the gallery’s commitment to online sales. It brings together a collection of highly sought-after paintings that engage with the tradition of figuration—a hallmark of David Zwirner’s program. The caliber is on par with the works that we would bring to a major fair, and we are thrilled to premiere this presentation online, showing the platform’s potential to reach a broad global audience at a moment when international travel and mobility have been disrupted.” —Elena Soboleva, Director of Online Sales
About David Zwirner Online
David Zwirner Online is the gallery’s online destination, where visitors can explore and collect works from curated, online-only exhibitions by gallery artists and special collaborations. Since launching in 2017 as the first online viewing room from a commercial gallery, David Zwirner Online has evolved into a seventh gallery space, distinguished by its curatorial approach (an extension of the gallery’s global program, with a constantly rotating program of presentations), the caliber of works (many of which come directly from artists studios), transparency (every viewing room shows pricing and availability), and artist involvement (gallery artists and estates are closely involved in conceptualizing the online viewing rooms). In 2019, the gallery presented eighteen online viewing rooms, including a new series dedicated to presentations of significant works in parallel with key moments on the art-fair calendar.
