WHAAM!

Whaam is a gallery. It's also the title of one of the most recognizable Roy Lichtenstein pieces. It's on the first floor of the Elizabeth Center: a 90s chinatown mall where you can get Polaroid aura readings and place your head in a plushie key chain wall.

The founder is Anatoly Kirichenko who came up through working at Stussy and CDG/Dover. His wife (and co-founder) happens to be Gia Kuan who runs a namesake PR group with accounts like Kiko Kostandinov, Bianca Censori, and Rocky's Matcha. The couple's wedding was covered in Vogue. This manifests in crossovers like her client Anna Bolina — the designer who's been called the "downtown Donatella" for her long platinum locks and the brand's sex appeal — using the mall and its escalators as a backdrop for her FW22 show.

There is no distinct narrative and it is far from blue chip. Their earlier group shows tended to look like a crit set up. A lot of their artists are fashion adjacent like airbrush artist Ally Bo and ancco who makes cutesy ceramic figurines (they've both worked with Heaven). Kim Hastreiter, the co-founder of PAPER and self-proclaimed collector of stuff, put together a shop for the holidays with things like a sweater of Santa doing Kim Kardashian's PAPER cover and ceramics from Bobbi Menuez's Secure Attachments. Many of the shows have been profiled in Office, Interview, or Hypebeast.