gratin

Great art wakes you up. Sometimes it hits fast with an ephemeral, euphoric shimmer that runs through your whole body. Other times it lingers, settling deep in your gut and your memory after you’ve walked out the door. The art at gratin does both. It’s the kind that starts as a flirtation and turns into a life-altering love.

A lot of shows here are often sexy, charged, and hyperreal. Think drool-worthy, dopamine-inducing paintings of women in lingerie, belly button to thigh. Or effortlessly cool black-and-white close-ups of leather-clad backsides, confident and unbothered.

Other times, they lean another way: less dream, more gritty and surreal nightmare. The riot era of 1960s Los Angeles. High life in New Orleans. What it’s like to be young in contemporary Mexico City, drawn in willowy lines and hard scratches. It’s art shaped by cities that shape you back.

The gallery itself is young and run by people with bright, open eyes and easy confidence. They’re building a charismatic and urbane scene; one that, we wager, people will be excited about for years to come.

Talal Abillama founded gratin in 2022. The gallery’s first location was in a black painted corner storefront on Avenue B. In 2024, he moved to the corner of Grand Street and Eldridge Street, where the program mixes artists in their 20s alongside more established ones who amp the magnetism. He’s one of those people for whom art is a way of life, which probably explains why the place feels alive the moment you walk in.