With New Tribeca Outpost, Gratin Gallery Doubles Down on Young Artists

Gratin founder Talal Abillama is a diamond in this era’s rough. Despite market conditions, his New York gallery keeps expanding. Some have attributed the dealer’s success to his wealthy family. Gratin’s artists say it’s something more.

Starting May 14, “Blinds and Shutters,” the debut U.S. solo show by rising Spanish sculptor Mónica Mays, will greet guests at the raw Tribeca gallery that Gratin just leased for 10 years.  Although the space is barely bigger than Gratin’s current Chinatown home, Abillama plans to make Mays the 12th artist on its growing roster. “Hopefully, I mean, depending on how I do my job,” he told me over the phone, “because the sculptures are still being made as we speak.”

Talal Abillama. Courtesy of Gratin.

No. 15 White Street will be Gratin’s third location since it first opened at 76 Avenue B in 2022. Gratin only stopped renting that space earlier this year—even though it took over the former Grand Street home of storied gallery 47 Canal in 2024. (That autumn, Gratin let artist Lorenzo Amos use 76 Avenue B to prepare a solo show with the gallery.) The 291 Grand Street address offered a similarly sleek contemporary art oasis amid an equally bustling, changing neighborhood, its storefront reliably inhabited by the likes of James Cohan and Alexandre Gallery. Since that move, Abillama has established himself as a dealer with promise, ambition, and devotion to artists.

Abillama told me that Gratin is mainly moving to Tribeca in order to meet art buyers where they are. Oftentimes, when he tells clients to make the 15-minute stroll from there to Chinatown, they drag their feet. Now, Gratin’s new spot sits next to Luhring Augustine, on the same block as Ortuzar Projects, in the 45-year home of Soho Photo Gallery.

“The location is perfect,” Abillama said. “You have a great, high ceiling.” Meanwhile, he had to hire a crane to get Brice Guilbert’s paintings into Gratin’s Chinatown gallery earlier this year. “Someone told me, ‘you should unstretch them,’” Abillama recalled, “but they’re on panel.”

Mónica Mays solo presentation with Blue Velvet gallery at Liste Basel 2023. Photo courtesy of Gratin.

“Blinds and Shudders” will introduce the art world to Gratin Tribeca in the thick of Frieze week. Renovations start after the exhibition closes, on June 20. Abillama believes Gratin Tribeca will officially open in November, at which point he’ll leave Grand Street. For now, Mays has been using the Tribeca location to put the finishing touches on new sculptures she’s made at the Brooklyn studio that Gratin has rented for her these past few months.

Abillama goes all in on his artists. He fell for Mays’s work upon encountering it at Basel’s Liste art fair in 2023. He flew to Madrid for a studio visit, then invited Mays to make a whole body of work in the U.S., offering her not just a studio, but a Brooklyn apartment, too. “I want to show the same artist for 20 and 30 years,” Abillama told me. “I think that’s how the impact becomes bigger, when you’re really committed.”

His new gallery further serves that intention. Abillama wants artists to foresee their fourth and fifth shows with Gratin. “That’s what I think I was missing from other spaces,” he said.