In a Soaring Chelsea Loft, Billy Clark and Valerio Polimeno Stage the "26TH AND 10TH" Exhibition

It all began in Paris. Influential entrepreneur Billy Clark, founder of BILLYCLARK, met art curator Valerio Polimeno of _POLIMENO in a private penthouse residence on Avenue Matignon with a 360-degree vantage of the city. There, timed to Art Basel Paris 2025, Polimeno hosted a multi-artist exhibition, “Room with a View.” “We were introduced,” Clark tells Surface, “I am not a curator, but I work in design, architecture, real estate development, and hospitality. There’s so much overlap and I was so impressed.”

Seeing alignment, Clark invited the curator to his office in New York City one month later—and then showed him his own sky-high space above it. “I said why don’t we do the next iteration of ‘Room with a View’ here,” Clark continues. “It’s been cooking ever since.” With this exhibition, “26TH AND 10TH,” Polimeno assembles an extraordinary slate of art and design talent—from Tom Wesselmann to Les Lalanne, Nan Goldin, and Robert Wilson.

The starting point, according to Polimeno, is an encounter with beauty. “I also believe in serendipity,” he says. “Sometimes in life there are encounters that you want or do not want to recognize. I remember two years ago coming to the opening of a gallery of a friend in New York and I began to dream of doing something in the city. With Billy’s infrastructure and expertise, this became possible. I am over the moon. The idea was to create a universe that’s very appropriate for New York, to adapt my concept, and not repeat what I did in Paris.”

In Paris, everything had been presented in crates. In New York, window blinds portion the space—both presenting it and protecting it. “In this apartment, there is an incredible view,” Polimeno explains, “but what we also wanted to do was create an inside window to our world. It’s not about the view; it’s about what’s inside.”

“The show is also about layers. New York is a land of possibilities, it’s a land of dreams, even dreaming beyond the achievable. There is an illusion, in a good sense, whereas in Europe we have a hardened rationality with boundaries,” Polimeno says. This manifests as a utopia from Donald Judd
to a baseball from Raymond Pettibon and a work reminiscent of bandages from Malù Dalla Piccola.

Attendees will quickly recognize the participating artists and works. This was Polimeno’s intention. “I am a Roman provençal arriving in New York and I am mesmerized by the city. I wanted to keep that sentiment because it’s a sentiment I feel every time I arrive,” he adds. “This town is the ultimate dream.” Further, through the blinds, Clark and Polimeno imbue the space with a cinematic intimacy—a bit American Psycho, a bit Rear Window, altogether unlike anything else in Chelsea.