Interview Magazine: Pietro Alexander’s Gallery Opening Was Also His Wedding
7/4/2026
By Emily Sandstrom May 28, 2026
Why not both? After running SPY Projects for four years, the LA-born gallerist Pietro Alexander is swapping coasts. Rechristened under his name, Pietro Alexander opened last week with his wedding to filmmaker and writer Sara Apple Maliki, taking place in the thirty minutes before the public opening.The last time someone got married in the space, located at 59 Wooster, it was the early 80s. That was when his uncle first opened the building, running it as an art space while living on the floor above. The rooms have sat largely untouched in subsequent years, with Alexander describing it as a “time capsule locked in amber.” Aptly named The Wedding Show, the inaugural exhibition melds together emerging and late-career artists across sculpture, painting, and installation from Ken Price, Craig Kauffman, Cristine Brache and Jaxon Demme (who Pietro and Apple first met each other through). While finding his feet in New York’s starkly different art world, Alexander sat down with Ellie Rines, the dealer behind 56 Henry who’s known for turning her downtown space into something of a blue chip incubator. In conversation, the two find out they have more in common than they initially realized. They’re both self-described landline dealers who believe the art world is far more regional than it appears, and that their common guiding principle is to commit first and figure it out as you go. At the gallery last week, the two reminisced about when people were hooked on buying art from JPEGs, and what it actually takes to open a gallery in 2026.
7/4/2026
By Emily Sandstrom May 28, 2026
Why not both? After running SPY Projects for four years, the LA-born gallerist Pietro Alexander is swapping coasts. Rechristened under his name, Pietro Alexander opened last week with his wedding to filmmaker and writer Sara Apple Maliki, taking place in the thirty minutes before the public opening.The last time someone got married in the space, located at 59 Wooster, it was the early 80s. That was when his uncle first opened the building, running it as an art space while living on the floor above. The rooms have sat largely untouched in subsequent years, with Alexander describing it as a “time capsule locked in amber.” Aptly named The Wedding Show, the inaugural exhibition melds together emerging and late-career artists across sculpture, painting, and installation from Ken Price, Craig Kauffman, Cristine Brache and Jaxon Demme (who Pietro and Apple first met each other through). While finding his feet in New York’s starkly different art world, Alexander sat down with Ellie Rines, the dealer behind 56 Henry who’s known for turning her downtown space into something of a blue chip incubator. In conversation, the two find out they have more in common than they initially realized. They’re both self-described landline dealers who believe the art world is far more regional than it appears, and that their common guiding principle is to commit first and figure it out as you go. At the gallery last week, the two reminisced about when people were hooked on buying art from JPEGs, and what it actually takes to open a gallery in 2026.
The New York Times: The Wedding Was Part of a Show, and the Show Was Part of the Wedding
7/4/2026
By Valeriya Safronova
June 19th, 2026
Pietro Brooke Robert Alexander and Sara Apple Maliki exchanged wedding vows May 22 at an art gallery in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Shortly after, the gallery opened to the public for its inaugural exhibition, aptly titled “The Wedding Show.”
It featured works by 14 artists, including Cristine Brache, John Altoon and Daniel Healey, and the public portion of the event was initially restricted to two rooms in the 7,500-square-foot loft, while the wedding guests could wander throughout.
“The room we got married in was one of the gallery rooms,” Maliki said. “The platform that we got married on remained and became like its own installation in the show.”
The event marked a new personal and professional chapter for Alexander, an art dealer, and Maliki, a writer, actress and filmmaker who goes by Sara Apple professionally, who dated long-distance between the East and West Coasts from 2022 until recently. The two plan to run the new gallery, called Pietro Alexander, in one section of the space and live in another.
“It’s a very bohemian situation,” Maliki said. “A huge factor of our relationship was him being able to move his business from L.A. to New York, and I think that as an art dealer, it’s the same thing as being a writer, in that your work is your life. There aren’t the same professional boundaries that exist for other people.”
The gallery was operated by Alexander’s uncle, Brooke Alexander, for several decades until his death in 2022. Alexander will run the gallery; Maliki will organize cultural programming.
Maliki, 33, was born in Key West, Fla., and grew up between there and Manhattan. She taught herself to write screenplays, and wrote a script for a film called “Lipstick Palm” with her friend, the actress Julia Fox.
7/4/2026
By Valeriya Safronova
June 19th, 2026
Pietro Brooke Robert Alexander and Sara Apple Maliki exchanged wedding vows May 22 at an art gallery in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Shortly after, the gallery opened to the public for its inaugural exhibition, aptly titled “The Wedding Show.”
It featured works by 14 artists, including Cristine Brache, John Altoon and Daniel Healey, and the public portion of the event was initially restricted to two rooms in the 7,500-square-foot loft, while the wedding guests could wander throughout.
“The room we got married in was one of the gallery rooms,” Maliki said. “The platform that we got married on remained and became like its own installation in the show.”
The event marked a new personal and professional chapter for Alexander, an art dealer, and Maliki, a writer, actress and filmmaker who goes by Sara Apple professionally, who dated long-distance between the East and West Coasts from 2022 until recently. The two plan to run the new gallery, called Pietro Alexander, in one section of the space and live in another.
“It’s a very bohemian situation,” Maliki said. “A huge factor of our relationship was him being able to move his business from L.A. to New York, and I think that as an art dealer, it’s the same thing as being a writer, in that your work is your life. There aren’t the same professional boundaries that exist for other people.”
The gallery was operated by Alexander’s uncle, Brooke Alexander, for several decades until his death in 2022. Alexander will run the gallery; Maliki will organize cultural programming.
Maliki, 33, was born in Key West, Fla., and grew up between there and Manhattan. She taught herself to write screenplays, and wrote a script for a film called “Lipstick Palm” with her friend, the actress Julia Fox.
Alexander, 28, was born and raised in Santa Monica, Calif., and received a bachelor’s degree in art history and literary arts from Brown. Between 2022 and late last year, he ran an art gallery in Los Angeles called Spy Projects.
Untitled Art, Houston
10/1/2025
Solo presentation of Daniel Healey's tape transfer paintings at Untitled Art, Houston, Texas-September 19-21, 2025
Courtesy of Pietro Alexander Gallery
10/1/2025
Solo presentation of Daniel Healey's tape transfer paintings at Untitled Art, Houston, Texas-September 19-21, 2025
Courtesy of Pietro Alexander Gallery
(tape ends) at SPY Projects
7/2/2025
SPY Projects is pleased to present tape ends, a solo exhibition of new work by Daniel Healey, on view from June 20 to July 27, 2025. An opening reception will take place on Friday, June 20, from 6 to 9 PM. This marks Healey’s second solo show with the gallery.
In tape ends, Healey continues to refine his signature tape transfer technique, using Scotch tape to lift ink from printed advertisements and transfer it onto canvas. Each piece of tape removes a sliver of color—typically from home décor catalogues or similar sources—creating a distinctive, rectangular mark. The works are composed entirely from this process, with no added pigment. As a result, Healey’s palette is determined by the colors available in commercial print media, particularly those found in product backdrops.
Unlike earlier works, which occasionally referenced their sources through faint imagery—such as glimpses of lamps or furniture—these new paintings are fully abstract. They present as atmospheric color fields, structured by the fine grid of overlapping tape segments and the layered texture of the ink transfers.
The process is both improvisational and exacting. Because each tape fragment can only be used once, the act of collecting color is inseparable from the act of composing the painting. Healey transforms familiar, disposable imagery into meditative, hand-built surfaces, shaped through repetition, selection, and constraint.
In this series, he draws specifically from printed images of daytime skies—those idealized backdrops often used in advertising to evoke calm, openness, or aspiration. Reconstructed on canvas, they become rhythmic fields of tone and surface, subtly animated by the geometry of the tape.
7/2/2025
SPY Projects is pleased to present tape ends, a solo exhibition of new work by Daniel Healey, on view from June 20 to July 27, 2025. An opening reception will take place on Friday, June 20, from 6 to 9 PM. This marks Healey’s second solo show with the gallery.
In tape ends, Healey continues to refine his signature tape transfer technique, using Scotch tape to lift ink from printed advertisements and transfer it onto canvas. Each piece of tape removes a sliver of color—typically from home décor catalogues or similar sources—creating a distinctive, rectangular mark. The works are composed entirely from this process, with no added pigment. As a result, Healey’s palette is determined by the colors available in commercial print media, particularly those found in product backdrops.
Unlike earlier works, which occasionally referenced their sources through faint imagery—such as glimpses of lamps or furniture—these new paintings are fully abstract. They present as atmospheric color fields, structured by the fine grid of overlapping tape segments and the layered texture of the ink transfers.
The process is both improvisational and exacting. Because each tape fragment can only be used once, the act of collecting color is inseparable from the act of composing the painting. Healey transforms familiar, disposable imagery into meditative, hand-built surfaces, shaped through repetition, selection, and constraint.
In this series, he draws specifically from printed images of daytime skies—those idealized backdrops often used in advertising to evoke calm, openness, or aspiration. Reconstructed on canvas, they become rhythmic fields of tone and surface, subtly animated by the geometry of the tape.
ParkerArts Foundation: Family Business Newsletter. Interview (tape ends) at Spy Projects
7/1/2025
In tape ends, his second solo exhibition with SPY Projects, Los Angeles-based artist Daniel Healey invites viewers to look up, though not quite in the way they might expect. On view from June 20 through July 27, 2025, the show unveils a new body of work composed entirely of Scotch tape and fragments of printed advertisements, mostly drawn from home décor catalogues. Each piece is a patient, labor-intensive arrangement of color lifted, one sliver at a time, from images of skies, then reconstructed into abstract fields on canvas.
“It’s kind of funny thinking about why I chose skies,” Healey admits. “Why deconstruct a bunch of photographs of skies to make new skies out of them?” The question half rhetorical, half serious captures the heart of tape ends: a conceptual loop where destruction begets creation, and where images of the everyday are quietly transformed into something sublime.
7/1/2025
In tape ends, his second solo exhibition with SPY Projects, Los Angeles-based artist Daniel Healey invites viewers to look up, though not quite in the way they might expect. On view from June 20 through July 27, 2025, the show unveils a new body of work composed entirely of Scotch tape and fragments of printed advertisements, mostly drawn from home décor catalogues. Each piece is a patient, labor-intensive arrangement of color lifted, one sliver at a time, from images of skies, then reconstructed into abstract fields on canvas.
“It’s kind of funny thinking about why I chose skies,” Healey admits. “Why deconstruct a bunch of photographs of skies to make new skies out of them?” The question half rhetorical, half serious captures the heart of tape ends: a conceptual loop where destruction begets creation, and where images of the everyday are quietly transformed into something sublime.
3M Letraset at PBA Projects Review: Whitehot Magazine by India Mandelkern
6/20/2025
"You could call these Scotch tape works collage, but they have a procedural kinship to painting. (When you allow that “paint” is really just a mixture of pigment and glue, it’s hard not to think of them this way.) The catalog is the palette. The tape is the brush and the varnish. The completed works look not only painterly but also opulent and lustrous; accreted layers of tape lend the works a glossy, resin-like sheen. You have to get very close to notice their faux craquelure-like effect. Healey is an expressionist in that way. He refuses to hide his brushwork."
-India Mandelkern
6/20/2025
"You could call these Scotch tape works collage, but they have a procedural kinship to painting. (When you allow that “paint” is really just a mixture of pigment and glue, it’s hard not to think of them this way.) The catalog is the palette. The tape is the brush and the varnish. The completed works look not only painterly but also opulent and lustrous; accreted layers of tape lend the works a glossy, resin-like sheen. You have to get very close to notice their faux craquelure-like effect. Healey is an expressionist in that way. He refuses to hide his brushwork."
-India Mandelkern
Lisa Bowman's Equisite Corspe: HyperAllergic review by Matt Stromberg
5/3/2025
LOS ANGELES — During the pandemic, Lisa Bowman found solace in her mailbox. Shortly before COVID-19 lockdowns began in early 2020, the Los Angeles-based artist and curator had begun an exquisite corpse mail art project. Made famous by the Surrealists a century ago, the exquisite corpse is a collaborative exercise between three people, each of whom contributes without seeing what the others have done. Inspired by a massive exquisite corpse exhibition held at the Drawing Center in New York in 1993, Bowman began sending out sheets of paper folded into three sections, with instructions and a self-addressed stamped envelope, to friends and colleagues. Then the pandemic hit.
“It was the perfect thing to do during the lockdown,” she told Hyperallergic in a studio visit last year. “It certainly saved me in a way, because I couldn’t go see art, and then I’d get these envelopes in the mail.”
Over the next year and a half, Bowman diligently mailed out and received packages. Her exquisite corpse project grew to 70 drawings featuring contributions from over 200 artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians, and curators, which she released as a book last year. The list of participants reflects Bowman’s creative circles in New York and LA, as well as their families and students, and artists she found through Instagram.
5/3/2025
LOS ANGELES — During the pandemic, Lisa Bowman found solace in her mailbox. Shortly before COVID-19 lockdowns began in early 2020, the Los Angeles-based artist and curator had begun an exquisite corpse mail art project. Made famous by the Surrealists a century ago, the exquisite corpse is a collaborative exercise between three people, each of whom contributes without seeing what the others have done. Inspired by a massive exquisite corpse exhibition held at the Drawing Center in New York in 1993, Bowman began sending out sheets of paper folded into three sections, with instructions and a self-addressed stamped envelope, to friends and colleagues. Then the pandemic hit.
“It was the perfect thing to do during the lockdown,” she told Hyperallergic in a studio visit last year. “It certainly saved me in a way, because I couldn’t go see art, and then I’d get these envelopes in the mail.”
Over the next year and a half, Bowman diligently mailed out and received packages. Her exquisite corpse project grew to 70 drawings featuring contributions from over 200 artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians, and curators, which she released as a book last year. The list of participants reflects Bowman’s creative circles in New York and LA, as well as their families and students, and artists she found through Instagram.
David Brower Center
3/12/2014
Reimagining Progress: Production, Consumption and Alternative Economies
May 22 - September 4, 2014
Reimagining Progress highlights the Bay Area’s diverse points of view regarding current patterns of consumption, our consumer-based society, and alternative, more sustainable practices.
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
510.809.0900
3/12/2014
Reimagining Progress: Production, Consumption and Alternative Economies
May 22 - September 4, 2014
Reimagining Progress highlights the Bay Area’s diverse points of view regarding current patterns of consumption, our consumer-based society, and alternative, more sustainable practices.
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
510.809.0900