A Survey of the Work of Shimon Okshteyn

The Black & White Gallery/Project Space will present the first posthumous survey of Shimon Okshteyn’s work in its new space at 4 North Main Street in Southampton. The gallery is set to open in March 2025.

Founded in 2002 in Brooklyn, the gallery has been committed to cultivating promising artists in the initial and more advanced phases of their careers exploring contemporary themes and concepts through multiple mediums.

Through its newly established exhibition space the gallery will support The Shimon Okshteyn Estate granting the public greater insight into the artist’s life and career. In doing so, the hope is to bring his work back into the spotlight and increase the visibility of his works within the local community and beyond.

The aim of The Shimon Okshteyn Estate is to promote and further the legacy of the artist Shimon Okshteyn (1951-2020), and by doing so, highlight his work and identity. The past four years have been dedicated to ensuring representation of Okshteyn in major museums such as Flint Institute of Art in Michigan, Iowa’s Grinnell College Art Museum, and The Telegraph in the Czech Republic. This remains the primary objective of the estate, along with archiving and making the vast assemblage collection of the Estate available to scholars, artists, collectors and the general public through exhibits and publications.

Born in Ukraine, Shimon Okshteyn lived and worked in the U.S. beginning in 1980. His work has been the subject of many exhibitions since his U.S. debut retrospective exhibition in 1987 at the G.W.V. Smith Museum, Springfield, Massachusetts. During his successful career, Okshteyn was represented by several international galleries, most notably by OK Harris and Stux Gallery. Since Stux Gallery closed in 2016, the work of Shimon Okshteyn, who died in 2020, has been without representation.