Gabriel Kilongo, the dealer behind the Miami Beach–based gallery Jupiter, is facing another lawsuit from a third artist who alleges that he is withholding money from the sales of her art.
Yirui Jia, a young painter who had a solo show at Jupiter’s Miami Beach location in 2025, sued Kilongo in September in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, alleging that he had only paid her $2,000 of a $42,000 sum owed for the sales of five paintings.
It is one of four lawsuits filed in the past two years against Kilongo, whose gallery also formerly operated in New York. Others, as first reported by Urgent Matter, have centered around allegations of nonpayment, damage to art, and withheld artworks. The lawsuit regarding the damaged artwork appears to have been settled, while the others appear to still be pending.
According to Jia’s lawsuit, she received written assurances from Kilongo that he would pay her. He told her that he was “managing a very tight cash flow,” per an exchange quoted in the lawsuit, and stated that he was “waiting for a few things to clear on the gallery’s end” in order to remit payment. But he did not do this, the suit alleges, and therefore defied the consignment agreement they had signed.
The suit includes a sales report produced by Jupiter that notes that all five paintings had sold for values between $2,000 and $32,000. Two went to a Vancouver-based buyer named Bing Zhang, the document states, while the other three went to Bradley Chubb, the Buffalo Bills linebacker who was traded from the Miami Dolphins earlier this year.
Kilongo has not responded to the complaint at this time of writing. He did not respond to ARTnews’s request for comment.
The dealer founded Jupiter in 2022, having previously worked at New York’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery as an associate. The gallery has regularly shown at notable art fairs, including Untitled, Expo Chicago, and Zona Maco, and has even continued doing so as Jupiter has faced lawsuits, most recently appearing in the Independent New York art fair this past May.
Kilongo has previously touted his relationship with Jia, whose work was the subject of a solo show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in 2024, the second to last one there before the gallery transitioned to an advisory. “We have successfully placed works by artists—like Yirui, for instance—in prominent collections, including those of some museum trustees,” Kilongo said in an interview for Artnet’s Gallery Network program. “It’s always incredibly gratifying to see how her work holds up along other historical artists while still maintaining Yirui’s distinct and recognizable identity.”
Urgent Matter reported in May that Kilongo surrendered his New York gallery to his landlord and agreed to pay $25,000. It is unclear, however, whether Jupiter continues to operate in Miami Beach. The gallery’s website states that the most recently staged exhibition, a two-person show for George Clinton and Gerasimos Floratos, closed in Miami Beach this past February.
In Artnet News, Kenny Schachter reported that Jupiter was administratively dissolved on September 25, exactly one day after Jia’s lawsuit.
Schachter’s column also stated that Kilongo, who was born in Democratic Republic of Congo and was raised in Israel, was detained by ICE and has since been released. Schachter attributed confirmation to James Snyder, director of New York’s Jewish Museum, but ARTnews could not establish a clear connection between Kilongo and that institution beyond the dealer having served on a host committee for a young collectors event held at the museum this past October. A database on ICE’s website that allows users to track detainees does not contain an accessible record for Kilongo.
Schachter did not mention in his column that he had himself exhibited with Jupiter in 2025. Others to have exhibited with the gallery include Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, Baseera Khan, Marcus Leslie Singleton, and Travis Fish.
The first of the lawsuits against Kilongo’s business was filed in 2025 by Jade Thacker, who alleged that she was owed $204,000 because he failed to pay her out for one sale and return works shown in 2024 that did not sell. Kilongo has not responded to Thacker’s lawsuit.
That lawsuit was followed by one in February 2026 from Location Incorporated, a New York entity based in the East Village that claimed Kilongo’s gallery had inflicted $1.6 million in damage to a sculpture shown at the Untitled Art, Miami Beach fair in 2024. Though the lawsuit did not identify the artist or work, Jupiter brought a work that year by New York–based artist Izhar Patkin. That lawsuit was dismissed and later settled, according to Urgent Matter.
And in March 2026, artist Stephanie Pierce sued Kilongo, echoing Thacker’s allegations by claiming that she was owed money for works sold in 2023 and that he withheld artworks. She sought $100,000 in damages. In this case, Kilongo responded by denying the allegations. Serving as his own legal representative, he said that “payment relating to the works has been made and that the return of the remaining works is actively in progress, with a majority already returned.”
