New York gallery Lubov has announced Mode Bonafilia and Kristen Wasik as its new owners. The pair succeed gallery founder Francisco Correa Cordero, who died suddenly this past August at the age of thirty-seven.
Established in 2016, Lubov gained a reputation as a welcoming home for cutting-edge artists. Thanks to Cordero’s charisma, it also became something of a hub for exciting events, happenings, readings, and performances.
“He created an atmosphere that was very magnetic,” painter Kevin Tobin, the subject of two solo exhibitions at Lubov, told Artnet News. “There wasn’t anyone else like him.”
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Bonafilia, who joined the gallery in 2025 as its director of community programming and education, and Wasik, who served as Lubov’s director from 2023 to 2024 before returning to take up the role earlier this year, made the decision to carry on Cordero’s work “immediately” after his death, according to a gallery press release. Both will serve as partners in the operation, with Bonafilia named “gallery dreamer,” in which capacity she will continue expanding programming initiatives. Wasik, a veteran of downtown NYC galleries Lyles & King and CHART, is Lubov’s “director of directions.”
“At a time in which alternative spaces in New York are becoming increasingly scarce, they regard Lubov’s continuation as essential. Whether or not to continue the gallery was never a question,” said the gallery in a press release. “Under their direction, the gallery will honor Cordero’s legacy while building upon it, supporting artists who make work out of necessity rather than for market value.”
Lubov currently has just two artists listed on its roster: sculptor Bryce Kroll, who came aboard under Cordero, and figurative expressionist painter Michael Hafftka. Lubov’s inaugural exhibition under its new owners, a solo show of Hafftka, opens Saturday, October 24.