Lexa Gates turns endurance into art with Her on the Wheel' amNewYork

"There is something very Old New York about a young woman putting herself on the lineliterallyand daring the city to keep up. Not the nostalgic, sepia-toned New York of postcards and penthouses, but the one with bite: downtown after dark, sweat and bravado, art that doesn't ask permission and music that doesn't wait its turn. That is where Lexa Gates lives right now, and Her on the Wheelthe durational performance staged at Jeffrey Deitchfelt like a perfectly tuned provocation to a city that still understands nerve."

"The premise was disarmingly simple and quietly brutal. For ten hours, from afternoon into midnight, Gates remained in motion on The Wheel, a custom-built, human-scale installation designed for endurance rather than spectacle. No gimmicks. No exits. Just repetition, time, and the slow exposure that happens when the body outlasts the performance and becomes the work itself."

"Critics have struggled to pin her down, resorting instead to admiring comparisonstart, infidelity-obsessed '90s R&B, lo-fi soul-leaning hip-hop, a trace of mid-century whimsyyet none of that quite captures the thing she does best. She makes confidence look casual. The New York Times called it offhand. Billboard called it refreshing. Office Magazine called it undeniable. All true. None sufficient. The Wheel made that clarity unavoidable."

Lexa Gates staged Her on the Wheel, a ten-hour durational performance at Jeffrey Deitch on a custom-built, human-scale Wheel designed for endurance rather than spectacle. She remained in motion from afternoon into midnight with no gimmicks and no exits, relying on repetition and time to make the body become the work. The piece preceded her sophomore album I Am and functioned as embodiment rather than promotion. Critics offered genre comparisons that failed to capture her casual confidence. The performance blurred ritual and rehearsal, emphasized cycles and nonlinear careers, and showed the body learning before the mind, feeling grounded and generous rather than precious.

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