Hunter Biden Returns to NYC for New Art Gallery Exhibit in SoHo

By: James McCloud

“Bridging the Abstract,” a group exhibition that opens April 6 at the Georges Bergès Gallery in Soho, includes some of the first son’s latest works alongside paintings by Elaine de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler. Hunter Biden, son of current President Joe Biden, is an accomplished artist.

Embattled first son Hunter Biden on Sunday popped up at the ritzy Soho gallery where his controversial artwork is on display alongside a slew of renowned abstract painters.

Biden, 53, the subject of an ongoing Republican-led probe on Capitol Hill, was all smiles as he was snapped at the Georges Berges Gallery — smugly quipping that he loved that The New York Post is reporting on his art.

According to the Georges Berge Gallery website, Hunter Biden is a lawyer by profession, and now devotes his energies to the creative arts, bringing innumerable experiences to bear. The results are powerful and impactful paintings ranging from photogenic to mixed media to the abstract. His chosen substrates are canvas, YUPO paper, wood, and metal on which he affixes oil, acrylic, ink along with the written word; all of which creates a unique experience that has become his signature.

In a New York Times review of a show of Biden’s from 2021, the art critic wrote, The most pleasant of Mr. Biden’s paintings are abstracted florals and landscapes, imposed of layers of watery pigment on Yupo, a nonabsorbent synthetic paper (actually more like a plastic) whose resistance permits easy marbling and coating. The artist blows the ink through a metal straw, resulting in exploded blossoms that look like lily pads, dandelions scattered by the wind, or viruses under the microscope. They’re pretty. They have the generic smoothness of the art you might see in a posh hotel room, or the end papers of a first edition. Certainly, they display a command of the fluid medium that reflects a seriousness of purpose, even if you forget them days or minutes later.

In January the Washington Free Beacon reported that Hunter Biden is in financial turmoil after his paintings sold for less than the six-figure price tags estimated by his gallerist, who previously spent time in jail for making terrorist threats.

The underwhelming sales have led Biden to consider launching a legal defense fund to help pay his mounting attorney bills stemming from a federal tax crime investigation and congressional inquiries into his foreign business dealings, the Washington Post reported.

Biden has sold around a dozen paintings “for a fraction of the $500,000 price tag once estimated” by his Manhattan gallerist Georges Berges, according to the Post. The congressional investigations into Biden have also spooked some prospective buyers, a source told the newspaper.

Berges, who was approved by the White House to vet Biden’s art sales for ethical conflicts, was sentenced to three months in jail in 1998 for threatening to stab a man to death and was later accused of defrauding an investor in a lawsuit that was settled in 2018.

Biden’s paintings failed to impress the art world. Tabish Khan, a London art critic, told Politico that “an initial online glance suggests there’s nothing new or challenging about his work.”