GOCA
GALLERY OF CONTEMPORARY ART BY GARDE
For GOCA, a Gallery of Contemporary Art with a strong focus on emerging Asian artists, art is a medium of cultural exchange. It connects varied sensibilities and inspires us to see the world, and ourselves, in new ways. To bring together American, Japanese, and Greater Asian perspectives, GOCA has artists take center stage. Its brand and site experience offers audiences an introduction to these new voices, while affording the gallery a vibrant hub — to showcase new art, encourage dialogue, and host new ideas.
Credits
Client: Garde
Agency: Athletics
CD: Daniel Irizarry
DD: Sebastian Páez Delvasto
Design: Sun Ho Lee, Munus Shih
Strategy: Liam Powell
CT: Britton Walker, Munus Shih
CM: Kathryn Farwell, Tanya Lesun
A spotlight on New Asian Art
For all its vibrant museums and galleries, New York was missing a space that offers new Asian artists a platform. As the first gallery of its kind in the city, GOCA does just that, introducing US and international audiences to emerging and established artists from Japan and across Asia, with works spanning painting, sculpture, and ceramics. It’s an initiative of GARDE, a Japan-based creative firm known for its contribution to architecture, design, and the visual arts.
For GoCA’s wordmark, we drew inspiration from katakana — syllabic characters — borrowing curves and corners for a bold and warm tone. The central ‘o,’ we’ll see, can be leveraged as a dynamic asset — something of a spotlight.
THE VOICE OF EMERGING ARTISTS
GOCA’s unifying concept is one of balance. It channels the gallery’s warm nature as a space for living artists, while respecting the tones and conventions that attend the New York art world, and Chelsea specifically. At its center is a voice — the presence of the individual artist — a human and approachable foundation for our identity. The Gallery’s name, an acronym, is inspired by institutional abbreviations, and invokes speed and dynamism with its first syllable, go.
Our wordmark is legible at many scales, large and small, allowing for varied and flexible application.
The gallery’s entrance, below the Highline on 23rd street, features a branded motif and digital surface for functional announcements.
ART BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Nestled below the Highline and in the heart of Chelsea, GOCA’s gallery space is a hub designed to showcase art and innovative brands from the Asian diaspora. A long hall with striking skylights, the space is a kind of bridge between continents, and hosts a variety of programming. In addition to information graphics, environmental branding ornaments glass installations at several key points.
Exhibition information, and other applied wayfinding, greet the visitor upon entering.
Generative patterns are composed of shapes from the wordmark, to striking effect.
A FRAMEWORK FOR ART AND ARTISTS
Built on the foundational shapes of the wordmark, the identity system flexes and bends to activate at a variety of scales. It’s as elegant as it is invitational, often framing artists in portraiture or, surprisingly, opening a window onto their artistic process itself. Video and motion breathe dynamism into its structure, which modulates easily to accommodate various depths of content — from out-of-home ads to deep-dives in a catalog.
A LIVING EXPERIENCE
A digital space for GOCA, the web experience carries its focus on art and artists to a new surface. It features vibrant animation — the centerpiece of a hub that feels alive and breathing. Shapes drawn from the logomark activate in refined motion, forming patternwork that shifts over time. Showcases of current exhibits, artist’s stories, and featured pieces tell the gallery’s story with economy, and vivid detail.
The Athletics team quickly grasped what makes our new Japanese gallery in New York uniquely creative and of exceptional quality. They translated that insight into a distinctive and inviting brand identity that stays true to our gallery’s core values and branding philosophy, setting us apart from other galleries.”
— Akinori Okada, Creative Director GOCA
Highlights from the launching event, captured in these images by MC3 Photo.
DANIEL IRIZARRY
EMAIL —
the.daniel.irizarry@gmail.com
© 2026 Daniel Irizarry All Rights Reserved
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