Set in Stone

Installation view, Set in Stone, David Zwirner, New York, 2026

Now Open

May 12—June 26, 2026

Location

New York: 69th Street

34 East 69th Street

New York, New York 10021

Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat: 10 AM-6 PM

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David Zwirner is pleased to present Set in Stone, an expansive group exhibition organized in collaboration with Galerie Kugel, the renowned Parisian gallery of pre-twentieth-century art. Curated by Emma Kronman, this presentation at David Zwirner’s East 69th Street location in New York places a considered group of paintings and sculpture by modern and contemporary artists from the gallery’s program in conversation with Galerie Kugel’s holdings of antique hardstone objects dating from classical antiquity through the nineteenth century.

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Set in Stone is organized around the premise that those who make art are connected—even when separated by continents and centuries—through a shared interest in the material world and in the pursuit of elevating that which is already found in nature through human intervention.  Inspired by some of the qualities that have influenced artists over history to work with stone, the exhibition centers on four themes that speak to process and appearance—translucency, luminosity, assemblage, and colorlessness—and illustrates these complementary concerns through unexpected juxtapositions of medium and technique.  While the works on view range widely in how each artist makes use of light, color, texture, and scale, the presentation suggests insightful resonances among this diversity and demonstrates the continued relevance of such formal investigations. In pursuit of visual splendor and material complexity, these artists find a shared visual language that spans millennia, geography, and cultural contexts.

Installation view, Set in Stone, David Zwirner, New York, 2026

Tobias Baur, A mounted agate cup on foot, Germany, 1690-1695 (detail)

William Eggleston, Untitled, 1974, (detail)

 

Installation view, Set in Stone, David Zwirner, New York, 2026

After a design by Ivan Ivanovitch Galberg, Imperial lapidary workshops ,A monumental Malachite tazza presented by Emperor Nicolas I to the Infante Luisa of Spain for her wedding in 1846 with the Duke Antoine de Montpensier, Peterhof, 1846 (detail)

Victor Man, Umbra Vitae, 2024-2025 (detail)

 

Installation view, Set in Stone, David Zwirner, New York, 2026

Giosuè Meli, Double busts carved in a single block, Rome, 1845 (detail)

Robert Ryman, Untitled, c. 1965 (detail)

 

Installation view, Set in Stone, David Zwirner, New York, 2026

Circle of Giuseppe Valadier, Saint Agnes, Rome, c. 1780-1800

Annie Albers, Black-White-Gold II, 1950 (detail)

 

Anonymous, A pietra dura cabinet, Venice, c. 1530 (detail)

Frank Moore, The Curators, 1996 (detail)

 

“Stones possess a kind of gravitas, something ultimate and unchanging, something that will never perish or else has already done so…. For a stone represents an obvious achievement, yet one arrived at without invention, skill, industry, or anything else that would make it a work in the human sense of the word, much less a work of art. The work comes later, as does art; but the far-off roots and hidden models of both lie in the obscure yet irresistible suggestions in nature.”

—Roger Caillois, The Writing of Stones, 1970 (translated by Barbara Bray)

Installation view, Set in Stone, David Zwirner, New York, 2026

Interior of Galerie Kugel, Paris

About Galerie Kugel, Paris

Representing six generations of a family of art dealers, Galerie Kugel was first established in Paris by Jacques Kugel in 1958. The Kugel name quickly gained international renown and Jacques became one of the most famed dealers of his time. The gallery moved to its current home in the famous Hôtel Collot, on Paris’s Left Bank opposite the Place de la Concorde, in 2004.  The gallery specializes in works from antiquity to the earlier part of the 19th century, and offers a uniquely wide range of specialties that are displayed in the historic rooms of the Hôtel Collot and in a neighboring space with a sparer, more modern presentation, which was inaugurated in 2016. The gallery’s pieces have been acquired by the Musée du Louvre, Paris; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Frick Collection, New York; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.  Learn more about the gallery here.

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