Lyons Wier Gallery directors Michael Lyons Wier and Deanne Shashoua live in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood with their black labrador, Georgia. At home, the couple has surrounded themselves with the same artists they champion, and visitors to their apartment are treated to a closer look at the vision that has made Lyons Wier Gallery such a dynamic presence in the contemporary art world.
Michael Lyons Wier opened the gallery in Chicago in 1993, and after completing his studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he relocated to New York in 2000. Shashoua did her graduate studies at Christie’s in New York, and comes from a family of collectors. Together, they’ve developed a vision of what Lyons Wier terms “conceptual realism,” attracting the gallery to artists who “work from photography as their source material but draw the essence of the photograph and not its exactness,” says Lyons Wier. “The work that I deal with, for the most part, has a figure or something representational in it as a doorway to the composition, but then the onion starts to be peeled back.”
Many of the works engage with social and political issues, and some also challenge our preconceptions of beauty. For example, there’s the Paul Mullins portrait of a scowling man in a suede vest that shows his nipples. “It’s rough, and it’s kind of ugly. But it has that really wonderful kind of painterly, luscious quality to it,” says Lyons Wier. It hangs over the couple’s Eero Saarinen Tulip table and Harry Bertoia chairs.
Brooklyn-born painter Fahamu Pecou is a friend of the gallerists, and a self-portrait of his alter ego, “The Shit,” presenting his middle finger, hangs in their living room. The piece used to hang in the sightline of the hallway to the couple’s bedroom. “When you got up in the morning, the first thing you’d see was being flipped off, and it’s like, ‘Welcome to New York! Get your day on!’” says Lyons Wier. “We find it galvanizing and energizing.”
On another wall of the room is what Shashoua calls the “Koons Cabinet of Curiosities.” It’s a Poul (Cado) Cadovius wall unit displaying works by Damien Hirst, Kehinde Wiley, Jenny Holzer and, of course, Jeff Koons. Lyons Wier has been buying Koons’s readymades since the artist-provocateur was a visiting lecturer at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1990s. “I like to say that Jeff Koons was to the end of the 20th century what Picasso was to the beginning,” says Lyons Wier.
In the center of the unit are two ceramic donuts by Lyons Wier artist Jae Yong Kim (you’ve probably spotted the delectable series on Instagram at some point.) Lyons Wier has a deeper take on what look like snackable sculptures at first glance. “Kim is really talking about the gluttonous consumption of contemporary art — the vacuous calories and how people are just gorging themselves on it. And we’re part and parcel of it,” he says.
In the corner next to the Cado is an oil painting by Cheryl Kelley, known for her hyperrealistic renderings of cars. In this particular painting, there’s a figure swimming in the car’s reflection. “I’m known as a figurative gallery. So it’s kind of like the gallery influenced how she was looking at her work. And since that was the first painting she did of that ilk, I knew that was going to be fantastic,” says Lyons Wier, who formerly represented Kelley and couldn’t resist adding it to the collection. Opposite that is a topless woman portrayed by Aaron Nagel. Even though she appears vulnerable, there is also power in her gaze, reinforced by the arrow she’s holding.
“When we bought that piece it kind of drove home the idea that yes, I collect figurative work, but more importantly, I collect eyes,” says Lyons Wier. The couple has been told that to visit their home is to be stared down by one or more of the portraits.
“When we first got together we both happened to collect mid-century modern furniture, so that was a nice fusion right there. When we moved in together and got married, we didn’t have to argue or eliminate anything,” says Shashoua. The furniture’s clean lines pair nicely with the abundant detail in their paintings and objects.
Given how well the apartment has come together, you might think there’s a decorating philosophy here to impart. Shashoua assures me that their only methodology is “We don’t have any rules.” Everything in the apartment is there because it inspires, and Lyons Wier brushes off any suggestion of sensory overload: “Where does the eye rest? I’ll rest when I’m dead.”
Then again, the case could be made that a Tim Okamura double-portrait of defiant young women in A-shirts paired with a vintage Overman lounge chair in soft leather is a comforting vignette after all.
