Later this evening, Amanita—a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by Garrett Goldsmith, Jacob Hyman, Tommaso Rositani Suckert, and Caio Twombly—will unveil its second location at 1 Freeman Alley. The former 19th-century carriage house that was once home to Jeanne Greenberg’s Salon 94 will serve as an intimate extension of Amanita’s base at 313 Bowery, a massive three-room space that was formerly the hybrid art gallery-performance annex to punk club CBGB.

In the past few years, Amanita’s staged exhibitions including solo shows with young artists like Leonardo Meoni and Adrian Schachter to group shows like Works on Paper: 100 Years that feature pieces from seminal figures including Richard Prince and Tracey Emin.

As Amanita enters its fourth year of operation, the gallery seeks to multiply the possibilities of their programming by offering their artists a cozier space that’s close to home. “When we first began to contemplate expansion in New York, naturally we considered other gallery neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side, Chelsea, and Tribeca, but it didn’t feel authentic to us,” says Hyman. “We love our neighbors around the Bowery and so we made a concerted effort to stick around. It was really important for us to maintain Amanita’s presence in this sphere that we’ve come to be a part of.”

The Bowery’s magnetic energy is part and parcel of Amanita’s own. The gallery’s flagship space on Bowery resists traditional white-cube standards with gnarled wood floors preserved from the CBGB days, and 1 Freeman Alley is imbued with its own history—the exposed wooden support beams in the gallery are beveled from once hosting stabled horses back when the space was used as a carriage house. “We just repainted the walls,” continues Hyman. “Everything else—floor, ceiling, beams—is preserved.”

Nicholas Campbell: World-Honored One. Ariadne, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Amanita. Photography by Guang Xu.

Nicholas Campbell: World-Honored One. Ariadne, Leader, and Nirvana, 2024. Courtesy of artist and Amanita. Photography by Guang Xu.

“One of the reasons why we had thought about the addition of a smaller space is that it allows us to commit to a program that stays true to our ambitions,” says Hyman, citing the possibilities for performance, installation, and sculpture at 1 Freeman Alley. The inaugural show hosted at the 1 Freeman gallery makes use of the compact volume. In World-Honored One, Nicholas Campbell will display four abstract paintings, one on each wall, whose umber palettes match the warm earthy tones of the space.

“When you think about CBGB and the spirit of that venue that exists here, Amanita has its own kind of punk spirit, where we aren’t interested in conforming to the downtown exhibition trends but we also aren’t trying to have a Chelsea feeling for our program,” says gallery director Lauryn-Ashley Vandyke. “I don’t mean to say that we’re anti-commercial, but in a sense we don’t fit into the pre-existing molds of the gallery models we’ve seen in Manhattan. We have our own way of doing things.”

In Amanita’s world, the choice to open a second gallery is intentional, rather than expansion for expansion’s sake. On Bowery and in Freeman Alley, their gallery mission remains steadfast: create a space where both early career and established artists can flourish.