Adam Heft Berninger has opened Heft, a new gallery on Manhattan's Lower East Side, dedicated to artists who work with systems-based practices such as generative code, machine learning, and scanners. Berninger, who previously worked with MoMA and the Public Art Fund and ran the curatorial platform Tender, emphasizes that the gallery is not an "AI art" gallery but a contemporary art space where technology serves as a tool for artistic methodology rather than a defining label. He argues that misconceptions about AI art can only be overcome through in-person viewing, and that the scarcity of galleries focused on this kind of work globally—countable on two hands—presents an opportunity.
This opening matters because it challenges the prevailing narrative of an art market slowdown by betting on a physical space and community engagement at a time when digital art is often consumed online. Berninger's distinction between "systems-based art" and the reductive label of "AI art" reframes the conversation around technology in art, linking contemporary practitioners to a historical lineage from Sol LeWitt to Eadweard Muybridge. The gallery's focus on in-person experience and conversation could reshape how collectors and the public engage with computationally driven art, potentially influencing broader market and critical reception of this emerging field.