﹒Observer
As New York’s Art Week Kicks Off, Here’s What Not to Miss at Esther III
In Observer’s on-site coverage of Esther III, BANK’s presentation of Alice Gong Xiaowen is highlighted as one of the fair’s notable presentations. The article describes Gong Xiaowen as an artist who finds the absurd in the ordinary while revealing layers of socio-cultural memory embedded in vernacular materiality. Her sculptures, installed across the pool table at Esther, are described as enacting a Freudian slip into memory and the subconscious, while her more abstract inkjet prints on silk suggest a fluid dissolution of time and space in the subconscious. The report further notes that her sculptures and two-dimensional works together embody histories of labor, famine, relocation, illness, and ideological transformation, returning through a poetics of contemporary archaeological fragments. By the end of the first day, one of the sculptures had sold to a young collector.
﹒The Art Newspaper
Esther fair goes out on top
In The Art Newspaper’s coverage of Esther III, the fair’s opening day is described as notably active, with at least two galleries selling out their presentations. The report specifically notes that BANK Gallery sold one work each by Alice Gong Xiaowen and Florian Meisenberg to “influential local collectors” during Tuesday’s preview.
﹒Hypebeast
The Beginning & End of Esther, NYC’s Coziest Art Fair
In its feature on Esther III, Hypebeast notes that BANK, alongside New York’s King’s Leap, presented works by Alice Gong Xiaowen in a parlor near the café, with the works mounted directly onto a pool table. The article places BANK’s presentation within Esther’s broader spatial and curatorial character, emphasizing the fair’s intimate atmosphere and its distinctive dialogue between art and architecture.
