Bernice Bing, the long-overlooked artist born in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1936, has had a cult following largely concentrated on the West Coast for decades. While Bing's contemporaries in the Bay Area art scene included artists like Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo, Bing’s art career never took off in the same way during her lifetime. On Thursday (12 September), Bing's first solo show in New York opened at Berry Campbell, the Chelsea gallery founded by Christine A. Berry and and Martha Campbell in 2013.
Bernice Bing: BINGO (until 12 October) spotlights Bing’s work from 1961 until her death from cancer at age 62 in 1996, nearly the full span of her career. Bing’s market is stronger now than it ever was when she was alive. It’s part of a broader demand for work by the women associated with Abstract Expressionism, like Lynne Drexler and Grace Hartigan, themselves long written off as the wives and friends of more high-profile artists. The market for Drexler’s work in particular skyrocketed in 2022, with seven-figure results at auction.
“I feel like Bernice Bing is almost the next Lynne Drexler,” Berry says. “For a while, nobody knew who (Drexler) was. We were selling these paintings for very little money. And then her market exploded.” Berry Campbell announced the gallery’s representation of the Bing estate in April.
— Carlie Porterfield, The Art Newspaper
