While the DOJ probes Hunter Biden’s work with Ukrainian energy company Burisma, President-elect Joe Biden’s son is focusing on his first solo art show.
Sources tell Page Six that Hunter is inking a deal as an artist to be represented by New York’s Georges Bergès Gallery. An announcement and exhibition of his work is being planned for next year.
The 50-year-old revealed earlier this year how his art — making blown ink abstractions on paper — has helped him battle addiction and cope with media attention.
Hunter told The New York Times in February that painting “is literally keeping me sane,” he said, adding, “For years I wouldn’t call myself an artist. Now I feel comfortable saying it.”
Painting “puts my energy toward something positive,” he continued, “It keeps me away from people and places where I shouldn’t be.”
Working from a studio in a pool house in the Hollywood Hills, he uses a metal straw to blow alcohol ink onto Japanese Yupo paper. “I want to protect this place,” he said. “The one thing I have left is my art. It’s the one thing they can’t take away from me or conflate with anything else.”
The piece added that Hunter had set out at the end of 2019 to find gallery representation and exhibit his work.
Some other art critics were not so enthusastic. Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine critic, described Hunter’s work as “Generic Post Zombie Formalism illustration”.
He told Artnet News of his advice to the budding artist, “Lose the big signature at once; forget the Kusama dots altogether; experiment with the surface and color and tools. Really consider the whole-page as a space and not make everything derivative all-over composition. The background doesn’t always have to be white, you big baby.”
Georges Bergès has a gallery in SoHo and another in Berlin and also reps Sly Stallone — for whom the gallery staged his first solo show — and Todd Williamson.
The gallery did not respond to multiple requests for comment and Hunter’s attorney George Mesires didn’t get back to us.
Hunter revealed last week that the Justice Department is investigating his taxes while he held a lucrative seat on Burisma’s board.
The new information indicates the probe into Hunter will examine a wide swath of his international pursuits, the Associated Press reported, citing a person familiar with the case.
Biden, who is assembling his Cabinet and administration in anticipation of entering the White House on Jan. 20, said he is “proud of my son.”