The brick warehouses on West 22nd, the sawtooth roofs, then the joined galleries: bare brick and concrete under skylights the length of a block, the works given all the room they want.
Dia Art Foundation was founded in 1974 to support ambitious long term projects by artists. Dia opened its first Chelsea exhibition building at 548 West 22nd Street in 1987, years before galleries filled the neighborhood. Its current Dia Chelsea, joined former warehouses across the street at 535 to 541 West 22nd, reopened in 2021 after a renovation by Architecture Research Office.
Source · Dia Art Foundation ↗
Three former marble and truck garages joined into one, the exposed brick walls painted white and left raw, the sawtooth skylights, the poured floors, the loading dock front, the High Line passing behind. Mood: twenty second street, grey day. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.