About the Exhibition:
AMSTERDAM – Anthony Gallery is proud to announce the opening of its new European gallery in Amsterdam with Proost! a solo exhibition of new work by Tony Lewis. The show marks both the gallery’s debut in the Netherlands and Lewis’s first solo presentation in the city. The opening reception is slated for Saturday, November 22nd, 2025 at 6 p.m. CET at Prinsengracht 405-H, 1016 HM Amsterdam. The exhibition will remain on view through January 17, 2026.
This body of work originated earlier this year as part of Lewis Bag, an experimental, full-service cocktail lounge conceived and operated by the artist within his studio. Each drawing in the series functions as a page from the Spring/Summer 2025 cocktail menu, from which guests can order during private appointments. The project marks Lewis’s first foray into creating an original cocktail menu, an inventive blend of new recipes and subtle variations on familiar classics.
More than a temporary installation or social experiment, Lewis Bag unfolds as a study in communication, atmosphere, and coded exchange. The lounge becomes a setting where conversation, gesture, and rumor carries as much weight as the cocktail drawings on the wall. The works that emerge from this environment translate that energy of language shared, secrets half-told, and stories suspended between people into visual form.
In Proost!, Lewis continues his exploration of the written and spoken word as a medium for abstraction. The cocktail drawings capture the dual nature of hospitality: its choreography of openness and performance, its undercurrent of intimacy and artifice. Each menu page becomes both an invitation and a record of human interaction, part document and part improvisation.
Translating the ephemerality of a night’s exchange into enduring form, Proost! expands Lewis’s practice of using text and mark-making to trace the dynamics of connection. The series invites viewers to consider how language, like a cocktail, can both reveal and conceal, mix truth with invention, and leave its residue in memory.
As Anthony Gallery opens its Amsterdam location, the exhibition signals the next chapter for founder Isimeme “Easy” Otabor and his team, extending the gallery’s Chicago-born vision into a European context while maintaining its focus on community, collaboration, and cross-cultural dialogue.
The exhibition will be on display and open to the public from November 22nd through January 17th at Anthony Gallery’s Amsterdam location at Prinsengracht 405-H, 1016 HM. Visitors are encouraged to come and explore the works on display with free admission. For more information about the exhibition and the artists featured, please visit the Anthony Gallery website or contact info@anthonygallery.com.
