Avedon helped define what makes New York just as much as New York defined who he was. Like Andy, he was so utterly recognizable, a walking, talking lodestar of glamour, beauty, art, culture, mega-success, and sophistication.

During a holiday in London at the ripe age of fourteen, Audrey Banks came up with the idea to start an exhibition space as a platform to show her paintings. Two years later, she realized she could use the room to showcase work from her generation and was bent on making it a reality.

Nigel Cooke’s exhibition at Andrea Rosen features seven new large-scale paintings, some over nine feet tall. Each painting mixes gestural abstraction with small details of figurative realism. The figures cohere with the fluid brushstrokes, while at the same time opening up the viewer’s interpretation. With the emphasis on the abstract, figures such as lovers, sailors, sirens, clowns, chefs, half-wits and smoking flower people appear on the canvas and evoke a half-real, half-conscious dream sequence.