As LGBTQ+-focused organisations throughout the US face essential funding challenges because of the federal authorities’s relentless cuts and a rightward shift in philanthropy, the Ali Forney Heart (AFC) is holding a profit exhibition at David Zwirner’s location on West nineteenth Avenue in Manhattan’s Chelsea gallery district. The AFC was based in 2002 in honour of the eponymous queer 22-year-old who was murdered on the road in Harlem after being disowned by their mother and father. This yr the organisation is dealing with a drop in funding of greater than $400,000 from the lack of company sponsors alone.
The profit present, organised for the second yr by the artwork adviser Stephen Truax, goals to ease the AFC’s monetary struggles by means of the sale of 38 works by a variety of artists together with sought-after youthful queer painters like Doron Langberg, Jenna Gribbon, Jake Grewal, Ilana Savdie and Anthony Cudahy. The exhibition, Towards the Mild: Artists for the Ali Forney Heart (28 October-1 November) additionally options works by pioneering figures like Wolfgang Tillmans, Julie Mehretu, Katherine Bradford, Jim Hodges, Ross Bleckner and Roberto Gil de Montes.
Jenna Gribbon, Among the many nipply blooms, 2025 © Jenna Gribbon. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
“The general public assaults on LGBTQ individuals and their rights throughout the nation could make us really feel powerless,” Truax tells The Artwork Newspaper. “Towards the Mild affords an optimistic different. Artists can come collectively and make an actual distinction for marginalised LGBTQ younger individuals.” He considers tasks like this fundraiser “extra important now than ever earlier than”.
Langberg initiated the profit to assist AFC in 2023 with a web based group present hosted by Sotheby’s that raised greater than $350,000 in assist of the organisation’s housing and care efforts for greater than 2,000 queer youth. “AFC is an extremely needed useful resource and one of the best ways to fundraise for it might be by means of artwork,” says Langberg, who contributed Avi and Pete (2025), a portray of two sitters on Hearth Island, to this yr’s present.
Nicolas Celebration, Portrait, 2025 © Nicolas Celebration. Picture: Sarah Muehlbauer. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Final yr’s second version of the profit sale, additionally with Sotheby’s, featured eight artists together with Salman Toor and Chris Martin, elevating greater than $370,000. Greater than two thirds of the artists collaborating on this yr’s version will donate 100% of the proceeds to AFC; that is the primary version of the fundraiser to have a bodily present. Occupying David Zwirner’s West nineteenth Avenue location, the exhibition advantages from its host’s blue-chip muscle and starry artist roster. The exhibition consists of works by Marlene Dumas, James Welling, Arlene Schechet, Jenny Holzer, Stanley Whitney, Laure Simmons, Nicolas Celebration, Joe Bradley and Sean Scully.
Dumas’s piercing piezograpohic print and graphite portrait of Alan Turing from 2015 and Gil de Montes’s lush wash of a blossoming visage in towards swirling summary strains (1996) bridge pains of queer historical past with a wanted sprint of reverie. Whether or not fleshy—as in Tillmans’s {photograph} Karl, Utoquai 2 (2012)—or abstracted—likeLiz Nielsen’s rainbow-hued chromogenic photogram of three rocks, Daring Stone Stack (2023)—the human physique looms giant throughout the presentation.
Wolfgang Tillmans, Karl, Utoquai 2, 2012 Courtesy the artist; David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; and Maureen Paley, London
Truax is optimistic concerning the artwork sector’s dedication to supporting and safeguarding its queer group, particularly after the success of the 2 earlier reveals and given David Zwirner’s assist.
“The work of queer artists was on the sidelines after I first moved to New York, and it’s now centred on the worldwide stage,” he says. “We’re seeing a a lot wider vary of voices collaborating in modern artwork and its market at present.”
Towards the Mild: Artists for the Ali Forney Heart, 28 October-1 November, David Zwirner, New York
