Urban explorer artist Isaac Wright, known professionally as “Drift,” was arrested last Thursday by four NYPD officers at the opening of his “Coming Home” show at Robert Mann Gallery in Chelsea. He was charged with criminal trespassing in the third degree, which is a class B misdemeanor under New York State law. He’s since been released on bail.
The alleged crime: scaling the Empire State Building and taking a photo, which is featured in the exhibition. It’s the fourth time he’s been arrested for trespassing.
Wright is known for jumping fences and scrambling up skyscrapers to shoot high-altitude photography, including shots from the top of New York’s Queensboro Bridge. He was profiled by the New York Times on May 10 before his ill-fated show, and was previously locked up for four months in December 2020 for illegally climbing three structures in Cincinnati. The police searched several states and shut down a highway to catch him.
“Coming Home” is his first-ever solo gallery exhibition in New York City.
“The opening night was a huge success, drawing tremendous interest and energy from the public,” Robert Mann, the founder of Robert Mann Gallery, told ARTnews via email. “While it was marked by unexpected events, we remain committed to celebrating Isaac’s vision and invite everyone to experience the exhibition first-hand. As history has shown, the art that challenges and confronts is often the art that changes how we see the world.”
Wright spoke to ARTnews about getting busted on his big night in front of 400 gallerygoers, why he risks his life for photography, and how art helps his mental health.
This interview has been edited lightly for concision and clarity.
ARTnews: Reports say there was an undercover policeman at your show last Thursday before you were arrested. Is that true?
Isaac Wright: Yes, he just looked out of place. I thought maybe he was just quietly observing the art. He wasn’t talking to anybody. He was just continuously looking at different pieces for over two hours. Kind of odd, but I didn’t have any reason to suspect that I was going to be arrested. No one had told me there was a warrant out for my arrest. I didn’t know anything. I was just there for my opening.
So you had no idea the police were after you?
Nope. I was totally shocked. They arrested me when I was mid-conversation with some people that were there looking at my art. I heard a voice behind me saying, ‘Mr Wright, we’re going to need you to put your hands behind your back.’ I thought it was a friend messing with me, that it was a joke. Then I turned around and saw four cops standing there. Two were undercover, the other two were wearing NYPD uniforms. It was super bizarre, but it wasn’t violent or super abrasive, like I’m used to. Each time I’ve been arrested in Arizona, Ohio, and Kentucky, there were around 10 heavily armed cops. I was always unarmed. But this time was more civil. When I was in the back of the police car, they told me they had planned to arrest me at the beginning of the night, but they liked my art so much that they waited a couple of hours so I could enjoy the occasion.
The New York Times reported you were arrested for climbing the Empire State Building…
I wasn’t caught climbing the building, and it was purported to have happened quite some time ago. It’s an open case so I can’t really talk about it, but I’m led to believe that the publishing of the photograph [Empire State of Mind (2024), taken from the top of the Empire State Building] on my Instagram months ago is what caused the police to put a warrant out for my arrest. The photo in question is included in my show at Robert Mann Gallery.
Why do you think the police waited until the opening of your show to arrest you?
I think partly it’s about making a statement, but I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. The police told me that because I still have an out of state address, they busted me at the gallery because they knew I’d have a static location. They were very kind to me, the cops weren’t unfair in the arrest, they were just doing their jobs.
Would it be fair to say that the police actually did you a favor by giving your opening at Robert Mann Gallery so much media attention?
In a way, yes. But I have to be upfront and say that I’m tired of getting attention for the wrong reasons. If I was this prolific in any other field, like painting, sculpting, or any other type of photography, I would be so much more celebrated for my work. My work is beautiful, it’s brilliant, it’s groundbreaking, and I hope that it challenges the way that we see the world. I hope that it challenges the way in which we view the world at a time when bodily agency is being so disrupted and challenged. I want my work to challenge systems, belief systems, and make the viewers think. There’s not enough contemporary art out there that involves the artists having all their skin in the game.
Do you have to break the law to create your work?
Unless buildings start giving me access…
Have you had any near misses while scaling buildings that have made you question what you’re doing?
You’re talking to me at a big transition period. I haven’t been out climbing in months. I’m at a point where I’m wanting to make big changes with my art in general. I don’t want my work to get lost in the hype. I believe my work is extremely historic. I think that it will have a clearly defined place in contemporary art history, and that when people look behind the art to what I’m actually saying, and what I’ve been through for the work, if you look at all the legal situations, I still created the body of work despite everything I was facing. Which other artists can say that, if they were facing 50 years in prison, that they would continue making their work. Clearly, I have something more to say than that I like being on tall things.
You’ve said that photography helps with your mental health. How important is it for you?
I was diagnosed with Bipolar I in 2023. I was also struggling with PTSD, depression, and mania after coming out of the army. It got a lot worse after what I went through with the police in Arizona, when they shut down the highway to arrest me. That was such a traumatic experience. I started experiencing memory loss. I started experiencing fluctuating moods. I’m someone that feels things violently and intensely. Photography is like catharsis. When I’m actively out creating something, it completely switches my brain off. That’s the best thing. Anytime I create work, I feel such a release of energy that I have pent up in my head. As an artist, your art helps you to make sense of the madness. And there’s a lot of artists who are extremely neurodivergent. I’m one of them. I’m violently neurodivergent, so to have something that can be an off switch is amazing. To be incarcerated is traumatic for anybody, but it was how I was treated by the police over three armed arrests. I’m also Black. I don’t want to make race the central thing here, but I just want to put that out there. But I live in America and to survive three armed arrests, being unarmed, with my military background, being young, being Black … statistically, I could have very well ended up dead. They threatened to put me away for 50 years. And all that for climbing buildings and taking photos. It just doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make sense.
Any plans to explore different artistic mediums in the future?
I’m really interested in branching out into multimedia work with a photographic base. I want to get into more filmmaking, and it would be lovely to teach myself how to paint. There’s a lot I want to express, but whatever I do, I know that it’s going to challenge and change the world. I think that I’m going to look back at this show at Robert Mann Gallery as something groundbreaking and career defining. Art should be about challenging public opinion and creating discourse.
