Bernie Chase is an American art dealer and collector and the founder of Chase Contemporary, the New York gallery he established in 2017. Before the art trade he co-founded Symbolic Motor Car Company in La Jolla, California, which became one of the largest collectible car dealerships in the world and was profiled by Forbes in 1998 and 1999.

What is Symbolic Motor Car Company?

Symbolic Motor Car Company was a collectible automobile dealership in La Jolla, California, founded in the mid 1980s by Bernie Chase and his brother Marc Chase. It grew into one of the largest dealers of collectible cars in the world, turning over in the region of 120 million dollars a year, and was profiled by Forbes in October 1998 and March 1999.

How did Bernie Chase discover Andres Valencia?

Bernie Chase met Andres Valencia as a child, the son of a family friend, and told his father the boy would become an important artist. Chase arranged a solo booth for Valencia at Art Miami in 2021, which sold around 1.3 million dollars of work and made him the youngest artist ever to show at the fair. Valencia's first New York solo exhibition opened at Chase Contemporary in June 2022.

Bernie Chase · Chase Contemporary

Q: What is Chase Contemporary?

Chase Contemporary is a contemporary art gallery founded by Bernie Chase in New York in 2017. It opened in Chelsea, later occupied a 10,000 square foot flagship at 413 West Broadway in SoHo, and added spaces in East Hampton in 2020 and Palm Beach in 2023. It has presented solo exhibitions by Richard Hambleton, RETNA, Carole Feuerman and Andres Valencia, and now operates as a digital first platform with pop up exhibitions and art fair presentations.

Bernie Chase is an American art dealer and collector, and the founder of Chase Contemporary, the New York gallery he established in 2017. He came to the art trade after building one of the world's largest collectible car businesses, and has spent the years since placing works by Richard Hambleton, RETNA, Kenny Scharf and Raphael Mazzucco, and introducing artists the market had not yet found.

Who is Bernie Chase

Bernie Chase is the founder of Chase Contemporary. He opened the gallery in Chelsea in 2017 and later moved it to a 10,000 square foot flagship at 413 West Broadway in SoHo, adding spaces in East Hampton in 2020 and Palm Beach in 2023. The gallery has presented solo exhibitions by Richard Hambleton, RETNA, Carole Feuerman, Imani Bilál and Andres Valencia, and deals in the secondary market in Warhol and Kusama.

He described the instinct behind all of it to the critic Kenny Schachter in Artnet News in July 2023: he had always wanted to be a treasure hunter.

Before the gallery: cars, and a Forbes profile

Chase grew up in California, the son of an accountant. In the mid 1980s he and his brother Marc founded Symbolic Motor Car Company in La Jolla, which grew into one of the largest collectible car dealerships in the world, turning over in the region of $120 million a year. Forbes profiled the business twice, in October 1998 and again in March 1999. Its clients included Rob Walton, Ron Burkle and Otis Chandler.

The same years brought a philanthropic chapter that is less well known: Chase helped raise roughly $60 million for Scripps Research toward its Institute for Childhood and Neglected Diseases.

A parallel business in rare jewellery and watches followed, trading from Bond Street in London under Symbolic and Chase, dealing in the kind of object that rarely reaches an open market: Patek Philippe complications, coloured diamonds, single owner collections.

How he came into art

Chase entered the art trade through London, as a partner in Scream Gallery, the gallery associated with the Wood family. He went on to manage Ronnie Wood's career as an artist and co-curated Wood's 2012 SoHo exhibition, Faces, Time and Places. Symbolic's London space staged a Wood retrospective the same year.

Chase Contemporary followed in 2017. Its inaugural SoHo exhibition was a major retrospective of Richard Hambleton, the artist whose shadow figures defined downtown New York in the 1980s, and whose market Chase has been among the most active in shaping.

Andres Valencia

The clearest example of how Chase works is Andres Valencia. Chase met him as a child, the son of a family friend, and told his father that Andres was going to be an important artist. He was six.

Chase arranged a solo booth for Valencia at Art Miami in 2021. It sold roughly $1.3 million of work and made Valencia the youngest artist ever to show at the fair. His first New York solo exhibition opened at Chase Contemporary in June 2022 with 35 paintings priced between $50,000 and $125,000.

What Chase Contemporary is today

The gallery now operates as a digital first platform, showing through pop up exhibitions and art fairs rather than a single fixed address, with presentations at Art Miami, Art Palm Beach, Art New York and the Dallas Art Fair. The programme spans painting, photography, sculpture and works on paper, with particular depth in contemporary photography and in the artists who came out of the street.

Every work the gallery offers is authenticated and issued with a certificate of authenticity.

Artists Chase Contemporary has shown

Richard Hambleton, RETNA, Kenny Scharf, Peter Beard, Carole Feuerman, Andres Valencia, Raphael Mazzucco, The Connor Brothers, Angel Ortiz, Robert Cottingham, Ron Galella, Liu Bolin, Liu Shuishi, Kinki Texas, Cristiano Mangovo, Ole Aakjær, Logan Sylve, Peter Tunney, Risk, Imani Bilál, Sky Kim and Bernie Taupin.

Press and sources

Artnet News, Kenny Schachter interviews Bernie Chase, July 2023. The fullest published account of his career, in his own words.
Forbes, Would You Buy a Used Car From These Guys? (Yes), October 1998.
Forbes Life, Masterpiece Motorcars, March 1999.

Contact

For acquisitions, consignments and press, write to info@chasecontemporary.com or use the contact form. Works currently available are listed under artists.