{"id":133662,"date":"2025-08-10T06:19:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T06:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/133662\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T06:19:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T06:19:23","slug":"adam-zhus-market-gallery-draws-the-art-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/133662\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Zhu\u2019s Market Gallery Draws the Art Crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"

About 200 people were gathered on a rooftop in Chinatown for an art opening inside a former storage shed. To get to the show, visitors walked through the one-bedroom apartment of Adam Zhu, the proprietor of Market Gallery.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNormally, I\u2019m grilling at an opening,\u201d he says. \u201cNewcomers are a bit taken aback, especially when they get to the apartment\u2019s door. They\u2019re like, \u2018Wait, am I in the right place?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhu, the artist, skateboarder, and photographer, moved into the apartment in 2015, and he\u2019s been renovating it ever since. Last summer, he enlisted the artist and contractor Andrew Kass to turn a rudimentary plywood structure used as a rehearsal space by his friends in the jazz band Onyx Collective into a 9-by-15-foot exhibition space with concrete walls and folding glass doors. Kass was the subject of Market\u2019s first opening in November.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n A view of Marcus Jahmal\u2019s \u201cMatch Made in Heaven\u201d at Market Gallery, from April.
\n Photo: Izzy Leung\n <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really snowballing into becoming this platform for emerging artists and more established artists to show their work,\u201d says Zhu, who has hosted seven shows on his roof, where he has installed picnic tables and a firepit. The structure of the shed \u201ccreates this awesome impact for the art where you can look through the window before going in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhu, 28, grew up in the East Village and has been skateboarding since he was old enough to ride the subway alone; later, he helped preserve a skate spot in Tompkins Square Park. After Supreme opened on Lafayette Street, he became a regular and then an employee, and today he serves as a brand consultant. A decade ago, Zhu\u2019s parents moved to Shanghai, where his father is originally from, and left the Chinatown apartment in his care.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Adam Zhu
\n Photo: Rachel Simon\n <\/p>\n

\u201cI convinced my dad to let me move in and help manage it while he was away, and I found roommates, and it was like what you imagine that would be like,\u201d Zhu says. \u201cThere was a messy chaotic-ness during those early years.\u201d The skater Shawn Powers and the hip-hop group Ratking used to crash there, and the graffiti artist Sabio built a plywood wall on the roof that over the years has been tagged by the likes of Cornbread, Yes2, GOOG, EARSNOT, and Curve.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been painted hundreds of times.\u201d These days, Zhu is there on his own, the kitchen has been refurbished, and a homemade cookout on the roof is as wild as the scene gets. \u201cI used to work in kitchens before I worked at Supreme, and I hosted dinner parties,\u201d he says. \u201cNow I have a more pointed way to host artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amanda Ba, \u201cExperiments: Private Paintings,\u201d is on view at Market Gallery until August 10.<\/p>\n

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 11, 2025, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n

Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now<\/a>
\n to support our journalism and get unlimited access to our coverage.
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 11, 2025, issue of
\n New York Magazine.<\/p>\n


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