The Brooklyn Rail

Over the course of more than thirty years in New York City and around the world, Asher Remy-Toledo founded and directed influential initiatives, including the Remy Toledo Gallery in Chelsea in 2004 and Hyphen Hub in 2013. Asher was a dear friend and one of the most important supporters, producers, and collectors of my work since 2004. He was a human being who was both loving and full of never-ending energy. He cared deeply about contemporary art’s resonance in the world. He was always full of inspiring thoughts and advice, most recently in the summer of 2025, when he was plotting how to bring my recent sound sculpture from a Midwest park to Colombia. Asher leaves behind a significant community of international artists as well as an important legacy that continues to impact feminist and media art histories. It is infinitely hard for me (and I know, for so many others) to imagine a world without him.

Asher and I met in 2004 in New York. He was moved by the drawings, performance, video, and sound work he saw at my then-studio at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation in Chinatown. He quickly offered to represent my work in his new gallery in Chelsea. That same year, he collaborated with Galerie Samuel Lallouz in Montreal (which became my second gallery) to organize a two-person exhibition with Carolee Schneemann and myself. In the process, Carolee became a dear friend until her untimely death in 2019. I also had the great honor of introducing Asher and Phill, long before Asher became so invested in media and sonic arts.

Asher was relentless in his championing of women artists, which he began by showcasing established figures such as Mary Beth Edelson, Judy Chicago, and Carolee Schneemann, as well as Ana Mendieta. Asher also supported those who followed in their footsteps, including Colombian artists Sara Modiano and Adriana Marmorek, and myself as a Polish artist in New York. My two-person exhibition with Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen at his gallery in 2006 was an experience of meditation on trace and surface as objects of art, as was my two-person show with Italian artist Federica Marangoni in Venice. Asher paired our gestural media and embodied practices together in a show held in conjunction with the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Asher was a deeply spiritual thinker, highly intuitive in his decision-making process, and independent in his opinions. He was a true visionary. He loved to bring new entities into being, such as the galleries and festivals he founded, directed, and curated. In 2009, he founded the nonprofit arts organization No Longer Empty, together with Manon Slome, as a response to a historical moment in which New York was deeply affected by the global recession. I had the tremendous honor to be part of the NLE show The Sixth Borough in 2010. He also founded Yuanfen Gallery in Beijing, developing the first new media gallery in mainland China. This list is only a partial look into Asher’s intense life, which was always full of travel, innovation, and engagement.

Asher loved my drawings and collected many of them, alongside my video/sound-based sculptures and performance-based photographs. Together with his spouse, Marc Routh, he amassed one of the largest private collections of my art, spanning from 2004 to 2019. He was also an avid collector of Schneemann’s, especially her Infinity Kisses series.

I have so many memories from Asher’s loft, including witnessing his two sons grow from tiny babies into young men, in a place that always felt like home. Asher often asked me to come early to his events so that I could improvise on his beautiful grand piano, only for him.

Asher’s passing is a shocking loss—the loss of a life so well lived, so deeply and profoundly impactful around the world, far too early. He is survived by his family, including two sons, and by a vast international community of artists and others who came to love him deeply—as I did, as I do. Goodbye, my dearest friend; see you on the other side at some point in the future. I will miss you until then.