Group Exhibition: Everyone you’re looking at is also you: Artists for the Ali Forney Center

David Zwirner is pleased to present Everyone you’re looking at is also you: Artists for the Ali Forney Center, the second consecutive exhibition at the gallery to benefit the Ali Forney Center, organized in collaboration with Stephen Truax. The exhibition will open on Tuesday, September 29, with a reception from 6 to 8 PM celebrating the artists and the organization, and will remain on view through Saturday, October 10, at David Zwirner’s 525 West 19th Street location.

Works by over forty leading contemporary artists will raise vital funds to support the Ali Forney Center’s mission to protect LGBTQ+ youth from homelessness in New York City. Featured artists include: Marina Adams, Leonard Baby, Huma Bhabha, Nicholas Bierk, Dike Blair, Ross Bleckner, Matt Bollinger, Katherine Bradford, Patrick Carroll, Vicky Colombet, Ann Craven, Anthony Cudahy, Kyle De Lotto, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Marlene Dumas, Louis Fratino, Ricardo Fumanal, Elizabeth Glaessner, Phoebe Helander, Christopher K. Ho, Jenny Holzer, Elizabeth Jaeger, Scott Kahn, Field Kallop, Toba Khedoori, Timothy Lai, Doron Langberg, Ian Lewandowski, Glenn Ligon, Nate Lowman, Kylie Manning, Rebecca Manson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Shota Nakamura, Liz Nielsen, Eli Ping, Celeste Rapone, Julia Rommel, Carol Saft, Peter Saul, Ilana Savdie, Peter Shear, Jay Stern, Sarah Sze, Wolfgang Tillmans, Anna Weyant, Stanley Whitney, and Robert Zehnder.

This exhibition marks the fourth annual fundraiser for the Ali Forney Center and the second presented at David Zwirner. Last year, Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center at David Zwirner raised nearly $1 million, which allowed the Ali Forney Center to onboard forty-five new, permanent beds for homeless LGBTQ+ young people in New York City. This direct support has a profound impact on the organization, which has lost significant federal funding. In 2023, the artist Doron Langberg organized a selling exhibition at Sotheby’s, and in 2024, Langberg entrusted the organization of the sale to Stephen Truax, who has since organized the annual exhibition.

The exhibition title is taken from a quote by James Baldwin in the Terence Dixon–directed documentary Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970):

Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person.

Founded in 2002 in memory of Ali Forney—a gender-nonconforming youth who was rejected by their family, lived on the streets of New York City, and was tragically murdered in 1997—the Ali Forney Center is now the nation’s largest provider of services to LGBTQ+ young people experiencing homelessness. Each year, the Ali Forney Center provides housing, meals, and life-saving support to more than 2,200 youth. With a waiting list already exceeding 200 people, the organization anticipates a 20% increase in demand for services this year, even as it faces a significant loss of government funding. Benefit initiatives like this exhibition are more essential than ever to protect the city’s most vulnerable queer and transgender youth.

Stephen Truax is an artist and art advisor in New York. He has organized numerous exhibitions including Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center at David Zwirner, Any distance between us at RISD Museum, Providence, and Intimacy at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. Earlier this year, Truax presented a solo exhibition of paintings on paper at Fernberger in Los Angeles. His work has recently been exhibited at the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, and the FLAG Art Foundation, New York. His work is in the public collections of the Tang and the Art Museum of West Virginia University, and has been discussed in the New York Times, Artforum, and in Fire Island Art: 100 Years (Phaidon, 2026). Before founding his advisory, he was a director at Cheim & Read from 2015 to 2022, where he specialized in modern and contemporary art from 1958 to the present. He earned his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.