Art world crisis — what crisis? Gazelli Art House is making a $7.5 million statement on its arrival in New York, acquiring the former Marlborough Gallery space in Chelsea and opening a new 10,000-square-foot gallery during Armory Week this September.
The London- and Baku-based gallery has acquired Marlborough’s former Chelsea premises for $7.5 million, according to Artforum. The move gives Gazelli its first permanent US space and extends its international programme across London, Baku and New York.
Marlborough occupied 545 West 25th Street until its closure in 2024, when the gallery announced it was winding down operations after 78 years. Its final exhibition at the address was Martin Eder’s DETOX, which closed in June 2024.
The sale therefore marks both another chapter in the dismantling of one of the post-war art world’s most influential galleries and the beginning of a rather different international gallery story in Chelsea.
Gazelli will launch the space with Put the Kettle On, opening on 23rd September 2026, following a preview the previous evening. The group exhibition brings together Agil Abdullayev, Memo Akten, Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty, Harold Cohen, Brendan Dawes, Jake Elwes, Lilly Fenichel, Jann Haworth, Kalliopi Lemos and Recycle Group.
Opening during Armory Week and alongside Gazelli’s presentation at The Armory Show, the exhibition will introduce New York to a programme the gallery has been developing since Mila Askarova founded it in London in 2010.
The Chelsea space itself is particularly substantial. Located across the first and second floors of the Chelsea Arts Tower, it was purpose-built to handle large-scale contemporary art, with high ceilings, direct street access for moving major works and a private second-floor terrace.
For Gazelli, the new gallery will provide more than 10,000 square feet for exhibitions, commissions and interdisciplinary projects, as well as a permanent base for developing relationships with artists, collectors and institutions across North America.
The title of the inaugural exhibition is deliberately informal. Put the Kettle On draws on tea culture in London and Baku — the two cities that have shaped Gazelli to date — and uses the familiar invitation as a starting point for bringing different generations, cultures and artistic practices together in its third city.
That cross-generational approach runs through the exhibition. Harold Cohen, whose experiments with rule-based systems ultimately led to AARON, one of the earliest computer programmes capable of autonomously producing drawings and paintings, is placed in conversation with contemporary artists including Memo Akten, Brendan Dawes, Jake Elwes and Recycle Group, whose practices engage with AI, algorithms and digital networks.
Elsewhere, Pauline Boty, Derek Boshier and Jann Haworth bring the exhibition back to post-war mass media and visual culture, while Lilly Fenichel’s abstraction and works by Agil Abdullayev and Kalliopi Lemos extend its conversations through painting, sculpture, memory, identity and displacement.
Mila Askarova, Founder & CEO of Gazelli Art House, said:
“New York felt like the natural next step for us. Since founding the gallery, we’ve remained committed to the enduring importance of the physical gallery as a place where artists, ideas and audiences meet.”
The New York expansion is particularly interesting given Gazelli’s longstanding engagement with digital art. The gallery established GAZELL.iO in 2015, supporting artists working with computational systems, generative processes, AI, virtual and augmented reality.
Askarova sees that digital programme as complementary to, rather than a replacement for, physical galleries:
“Even as we’ve championed digital art through GAZELL.iO, our ambition has always been to expand – not replace – the traditional gallery model.”
The arrival also gives an important Chelsea gallery address a remarkably quick second life. Marlborough announced its closure in 2024 after a history stretching back to its foundation in London in 1946, during which it worked with artists including Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Paula Rego and Frank Auerbach.
Two years later, 545 West 25th Street is becoming an international gallery again — this time with roots in London and Baku, an established interest in the relationship between art and technology, and a kettle waiting to go on.
Gazelli Art House: Put the Kettle On, 23rd September–31st October 2026, Gazelli Art House New York
Art Preview 22nd September 2026, 6PM–8PM
