Hunter Biden plans art expo with Sylvester Stallone's dealer who was charged with 'terrorist threats'
Hunter Biden might be laying low as his taxes and international business dealings are probed by federal prosecutors, but he does not plan to take a break from adding onto his bank balance. As a result, he might be looking to start a new career in art.
According to a report by New York Post, the president's son is planning a solo exhibition with Soho art dealer Georges Berges, who currently represents Sylvester Stallone. Apparently, painting helped Biden cope with his battles with drug and alcohol addiction. He told The New York Times that art is “literally keeping me sane right now."
Biden does have the talent for it. New York art critic Anthony Haden-Guest told the Post, "If I didn’t know who it was and I saw it for the first time, I would think it was pretty interesting stuff. He’s got talent." Although no pictures of the paintings are available, the outlet described them to feature pastel bursts of flowers and other shapes. It has been created with layers of alcohol ink that are blown with a metallic straw onto Japanese Yupo paper, which is a smooth synthetic material made from recycled paper.
Berges opened his Soho gallery in 2015 and has also hosted galleries in New York and Berlin, which have been visited by Spike Lee, Dave Chapelle and Susan Sarandon, among other well-known celebrities. “He’s got this Woody Allen look to him… He’s crazy in a good way,” one artist who’s worked with Berges told The Post.
However, the dealer does have a controversial past, including a criminal record for making “terrorist threats” and assault with a deadly weapon in California. He also allegedly has strong ties to China.
According to a federal lawsuit from 2016, Berges was accused of defrauding an investor. Ingrid Arneberg claims she invested $500,000 in Berges’ gallery for a promised expansion, but he, instead, used the money to pay off old debts. She was later countersued by Berges. The case was settled in 2018. In 1998, he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and making “terrorist threats". The latter charges were dismissed. He pled “no contest” to the assault and was sentenced to 36 months probation and 90 days in jail, according to Santa Cruz Superior Court documents.
After the Post published a trove of emails from Hunter’s laptop, which seemed to raise a number of questions about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden's foreign business ventures, it quickly escalated to become a heated political issue in the final months of the 2020 presidential campaign. It was revealed that Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, reportedly paid Hunter $50,000 a month between 2014 and 2019 to sit on its board of directors. He was also to receive more than $10M a year for allegedly promoting the interests of CEFC China Energy Co, a Chinese conglomerate, by introducing them to officials in Washington.
“Hunter Biden’s tangled web of shell companies, LLCs, investment vehicles, and options agreements make it virtually impossible to know where he is getting income from,” said Thomas Anderson, director for National Legal Policy Center. He added that selling his artwork to wealthy investors may also be a lucrative way to earn more money. “We highly doubt, however, a career as an artist will do anything more than act as a vehicle to further shield where that income is coming from,” he said.