Alessandro Pessoli: NY Window at Anton Kern Gallery's WINDOW

Anton Kern Gallery's WINDOW, a street-level display space at the corner of Walker and Lafayette Streets, is showing NY Window by Alessandro Pessoli from September 9 through October 31, 2026. It is the artist's first presentation at WINDOW and his ninth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Pessoli was born in Cervia, Italy, in 1963 and lives and works in Los Angeles. For this project he has made 57 new works on paper. They are installed from floor to ceiling and wrap around the interior of the window, so that passersby look into a space lined with drawings on every side.

The drawings work as a set of non-linear narratives. Each one isolates a vignette taken from Americana, religious iconography, popular culture, politics or everyday life. Figures and animals sit somewhere between struggle and euphoria: they indulge fantasies, commit or suffer violence, drift through boredom, and face their temptations, anxieties and the consequences that follow. Taken together, the sheets form a fractured but continuous picture of the psychological and material contradictions, absurdities and pitfalls of ordinary life.

The titles give a sense of the range. Some point to the United States directly, such as "The United States of America," "We the people," "American loneliness" and "The collapsed cowboy." Others turn to memory, among them "Italian childhood 1963" and "Summer in 1974." A number deal with power and judgment ("Cruel king," "The judge," "Following a stupid leader"), and several with love and its failures ("Misunderstanding of love," "Messages for people incapable of loving").

WINDOW is on view 24 hours a day at 91 Walker Street, so the show can be seen at any hour from the sidewalk. The gallery's main space is at 16 East 55th Street and is open Monday to Friday, 10am to 6pm.