Wet Paint: Hunter Biden’s Wild Nights in the Downtown Art Scene, Inigo Philbrick’s Thai Hideaway, and More Juicy Art-World Gossip

Every Thursday afternoon, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a
gossip column of original scoops reported and written by Nate
Freeman. If you have a tip, email Nate
at nfreeman@artnet.com.

HUNTER BIDEN BEFRIENDS ART-WORLD INSTAGRAM
SENSATION

At the start of last year, Hunter Biden—the son
of former vice president Joe Biden—was perhaps
best known for his battles with drug addiction and his decision to
start up a relationship with his late brother Beau’s widow. He
enters the new decade at the center of whistle-blower controversy
that culminated with the impeachment of President Donald
Trump, who has been accused of withholding hundreds of
millions of aid to a war-torn US ally on the condition that its
president reopen the since-closed investigation into the eldest
Biden son. The extra-hot spotlight on the son of the Democratic
front-runner has caused the tabloids to unearth all sorts of sordid
details, from drug relapses to a paternity suit brought by a
Washington, DC-based stripper. What’s yet to be disclosed, however,
are Biden’s ties to the downtown New York art scene, a world away
from the board of Burisma in Kiev.

For a period in 2018, Biden could be seen stopping by art
openings and parties on the Lower East Side, and attended a runway
show for the hip downtown fashion brand Lou
Dallas. Sources said that many of his art-world
connections came through his relationship with Zoe
Kestan, the lingerie entrepreneur who is better known by
her Instagram handle @weed_slut_420. In addition
to modeling her wares on her account, where she has nearly 75,000
followers, Kestan is also an artist whose Polaroid snapshots have
appeared in group shows with Bernadette Van-Huy,
Danny McDonald, and Sam Pulitzer.
She has also appeared on the controversial podcast Red
Scare, hosted by art critic Anna
Khachiyan and actress Dasha Nekrasova,
and modeled in runway shows during London Fashion
Week. (Reps for Kestan and Biden didn’t get back to
us.)

There’s also some concrete leftover evidence of Hunter’s brief
wade into the water of downtown art studios and gallery openings.
Sources say that, being circulated around the downtown gallery hub
of Dimes Square like samizdat, are images of oil paintings of
Hunter Biden—that is, images of paintings of all of
Biden with nothing left to the imagination—made by another
local artist who has asked dealers to not reveal her identity.
We’ve yet to get a hold of the depictions of Hunter in the buff or
a lead on that painter’s identity, but rest assured: we will keep
you posted.

IS INIGO HIDDEN IN A JUNGLE OASIS?

Last month, a source close to the infamous alleged
art-world swindler Inigo Philbrick told us the
on-the-lam former high-flying wheeler-dealer was somewhere in
Thailand, having fled from authorities in the United States and
England who have frozen his assets, and leaving lawyers twisting in
the wind after he declined to show up at multiple court
appearances. Where in Thailand, exactly? Well, another tipster
reached out with the evidence of a trip taken with Philbrick years
ago in the jungles outside of Chiang Mai, and thinks that he might
have returned there to hide out.

The old pictures show the now-embattled dealer horsing around
with his travel companions—including Gia
Coppola, the film-world royalty who would go on to become
a director herself—and strolling through marketplaces, his serene
face blissfully unaware of the troubles he would find himself in
years later. And while there’s no direct evidence that he’s gone
back to the jungle to hide, the source did say that Philbrick was
even back then—six years before he
took the helm of Modern Collections, a London-based secondary
market dealership co-directed by White Cube
founder Jay Jopling, and 14 years before he
found himself in hot legal water—flaunting his insider status in
the art world. At one point, he led the whole team to visit
Rirkrit Tiravanija at his Land
Foundation, which the artist established outside of Chiang
Mai in 2004, and they were greeted with open arms. We doubt he’d
get the same reception today.

MUSEUM ACCUSED OF TRASHING WORK TO SAVE ON SHIPPING

As an exhibition ended, a hard-up museum is said to have offered
an artist a twisted Sophie’s Choice: Which of your works do you
want shipped back, and which do you want to be destroyed? That was
the situation facing the artist Jessica Vaughn at
the end of her first-ever solo museum show, which was up at
Dallas Contemporary from September until late
December. As the show wound down, sources said that DC director
Peter Doroshenko reached out to Vaughn and
informed her that the show was over budget, and with no money left
to ship the work—which consists of large-scale sculptural
installations that can involve construction-site detritus and large
television screens—to her studio in Brooklyn, some would have to be
destroyed in Texas and discarded. Vaughn enlisted her gallery,
Martos in New York’s Chinatown, to see if they
could negotiate to save the work, and after protracted talks,
Vaughn chose a few to be shipped back; others were
destroyed. (Neither Dallas Contemporary nor Martos would give
details on how the shipping was paid for.)

In a statement to Wet Paint, Doroshenko said any destruction was
agreed-upon: “The Dallas Contemporary commissioned a site-specific
work from artist Jessica Vaughn. Elements of this installation
included discarded office cubicles that the museum purchased. At
the close of the exhibition the museum agreed with the artist to
send a limited number of cubicle elements to NY. The artist,
museum, and gallery concluded this exhibition on amicable terms.”
The show was a groundbreaking triumph, though admittedly a belated
one: it’s said to be the first solo show by a black artist in the
near-decade since Doroshenko took the helm at the revamped museum
in 2010.

CURTAINS FOR ARTINFO

Has the grim reaper finally come for the Louise
Blouin empire? Artinfo, the flagship website of a network
that the collector launched in 2005 as a constantly-updated
chronicle of the high-end world of art and culture, is no longer
operational. Blouinartinfo.com—which has been the site’s url since
the owner’s decision to smack her own hard-to-pronounce name at the
beginning of her news site—no longer loads, and simply goes to a
site that says “bad gateway.” A representative for Blouin did not
return a request for comment on the fate of the site by press time.
But if it’s gone for good, it’s no terrible surprise. The operation
is years removed from the height of its influence—when many
writers, Wet Paint included, did stints in the LBM Media gulag—and
in 2017, according to reports, the entire New
York-based staff was laid off and key employees were asked to
reapply to work as freelancers. But as recently as November,
the British publication Private Eye published the account
of a freelancer who signed a 12-month contract, but then was not
paid after the first month. After the former hired gun attempted to
sue and heard nothing back from Blouin, the hapless writer went to
the office addresses listed under her name only to find that no one
there had heard of her. For a woman who put her name on every art
website and magazine in her portfolio, that might sting more than
anything else.

WE HEAR…

Andy Hall, the former Citibank trader who
pulled in so many hundreds of millions of dollars in the run-up to
the recession that his colleagues nicknamed him “god,” will host a
show at his private museum in Vermont titled “Late America”
that reflects his virulently anti-Trump Instagram presence,
featuring politically charged works by Barbara
Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Judith
Bernstein, Mickalene Thomas, and more …
Marina Garcia-Vasquez is out as the
editor-in-chief of Artsy after just nine months,
further indicating a breakdown of its editorial operations—three
editorial staffers were let go among the 20 laid off by incoming
CEO last September … Amoako Boafo, who emerged as a market
star in Miami last month during Art Basel Miami
Beach, will have work at February’s Felix Los
Angeles fair in the Hollywood Roosevelt
Hotel, at the booth of Roberts
Projects … the Metropolitan Museum of
Art has apologized on Twitter after
being called out by both advocates and New York City’s human rights
commission for asking prospective research assistants to
provide a salary history—even though it’s been illegal for an
employer to ask applicants for a salary history in New York City
since 2017 … Jerry Saltz is once again
indulging in his inner Instagram skeezeball by asking “have you
ever orgasmed while looking at art?” and then clarifying that it
doesn’t count if there is “touching/friction.”

SPOTTED…

Billionaire collectors Roman Abramovich and
David Geffen both parking their yachts in St.
Barts for New Years, though we got no word of any sign of
Caribbean-dwelling snow-bunny Larry Gagosian, who
has a massive waterside house on the Island *** Also on St. Barts:
the rapper, Harmony Korine collaborator, and
all-around American hero Gucci Mane ***
Alexander Gilkes, the former
Paddle8 chairman, making an extended cameo in
Adam Sandler thriller “Uncut Gems” playing—what
else?—a suave English auctioneer.

PARTING SHOT

The post Wet Paint: Hunter Biden’s Wild Nights in the
Downtown Art Scene, Inigo Philbrick’s Thai Hideaway, and More Juicy
Art-World Gossip appeared first on artnet News.