New York Art Week 2025: Highlights from the Art Fairs

The Armory Show 

An instantaneous good omen that portended a successful Armory Show came in the form of a recent Peter Halley painting in his signature dayglo pops of color and textured surface from the San Francisco-based Berggruen Gallery as this jumped out from a considerable distance. That first “ooh” I let out in response to this was only the beginning as the magnitude and variability of works - a strong balance between the Modern and the Contemporary, the established and the emerging, the groundbreaking and the mind boggling - became a feast for the eyes to behold. A successful throughline for the booths with which I spent a prolonged time came down to two crucially inseparable factors: a brilliant curatorial direction and in exhibiting stellar artists paving the way for the future of Contemporary Art. 

Dustin Yellin (American, b. 1975), Politics of Eternity, 2020, glass, collage, acrylic paint, epoxy, stainless steel. 97 x 131 x 19.25 inches. Photos by Martyna Szczensna.

The sky’s the limit for sculpture as the variability of its material, dimensional, and formal representations were quite seismic: the metabolic durability of Mary Ann Unger’s bonded steel sculptural mass (Berry Campbell Gallery, Chelsea); a Brancusian precariousness seen in the fragile / hardening contrasts of Nathalia Edenmont’s sculpture of a damaged egg balancing on an uneven, stony base (Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden); or even the humongous womb-shaped Inference (2015) by Daniel Zeller, which was so large it occupied its own space sans booth (Pierogi Gallery, New York). One sculpture in particular was virtually impossible to photograph, not because of lighting, but the unending crowds that swarmed Dustin Yellin’s chevron-shaped heptatych Politics of Eternity. Yellin’s sculpture exuded a monumentality that was partly to do with scale, but much more in the meticulousness of the swarming, overlapping, inundated figures that formed a symphonic overload of Boschian chaos permanently frozen in place. As is the case with Yellin’s other work, it’s a very different kind of sculpture-in-the-round, not in the freestanding figurative sense, but in the elaborate world-building he pursues in which sculptural language takes on the accoutrements of epic narrative one would normally associate with a gigantic painting. 

Pauline Boty (British, 1938 - 1966), Untitled (Christmas '64), 1964, gouache, ink, and collage on paper. 44.5 x 32.1 cm. / 17 1/2 x 12 5/8 in. Gazelli Art House, London, UK & Baku, Azerbaijan

The canonized masters of yesterday’s 20th Century and the living legends of today could be found everywhere - Yoshitomo Nara’s kawaii-inspired paintings at Archeus / Post-Modern (London, United Kingdom); the Larry David-esque sardonic humor of Mel Bochner’s declaratory monoprints (Two Palms, New York); or the continentally-scaled fields of color that imbibe the paintings of Vincent Bioulès with a calming effervescence (Galerie La Forest Divonne, Paris & Brussels). But there were quite a number of pleasant surprises along the way with artists who I did not anticipate seeing. Gazelli Art House (London, United Kingdom & Baku, Azerbaijan) featured collages by Pauline Boty, the sole female artist associated with British Pop Art and London’s Swinging Sixties art scene; I was transfixed by a collage Boty created for a Christmas card design containing a panoply of floral motifs and female figures intermixed over a painted vivid red background.

A renewed vigor is being brought to the landscape genre, too, based on Sophia Heymans’s surrealistic, memory-rooted paintings (SHRINE, Tribeca), Daniel Rich’s densely layered and geometrically ordered cityscape (Miles McEnery Gallery, Chelsea), and photographer Matthew Pillsbury’s embrace of the scenic spontaneity of moonlit nature (Edwynn Houk Gallery, Midtown).

Kudos to the galleries who decided the white walled booths were not enough, as there were quite a number who decided to give their spaces a colorful jolt - either in full or selectively. Tom Wesselman’s gold-framed Bedroom Breast painting stood out over turquoise (Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf), while Christopher Robin Duncan’s svelte-looking abstract paintings were hung on a wall whose wallpaper echoed the implied textures found in his work (Halsey McKay Gallery, New York & East Hampton).

Art on Paper

As the sole fair in New York focusing on a specific medium - paper - it was quite inspiring to see the infinitesimal ways in which such a simple and ubiquitous material could be transformed into something transcendent, mesmerizing, and magical. Putting it in broad strokes for a moment, there were two camps of how paper was utilized: paper as surface and paper as material. 

TransBorder Art paired two artists with unique motif fixations: Graciela Cassel's water-focused subjects and Sarah Dineen's recurring patterned keyholes. A nice, even split between the artists' works where the former applies a mixed media element of shimmery reflections to convey the vastness and depth of the ocean, while the latter treats the keyhole as a portal into the unknown. An important unifying factor between the two artists - expertly woven together by curator Raluca Anchidin - is that both probe the emotional resonances stemming from such profound phenomena, the magnitude of oceans and a certain ethereality behind the narrow keyhole. In a different take on surface, Dan Life (Phillip + Dan Projects, Los Angeles) infuses an appropriationist mentality with his insertion of crystal and clay-layered popular culture figures and George Condo artwork reproductions onto blown-up covers of INTERIORS Magazine.

Lisa Meek, Toxic Beauty, 2025, book, paper, pages. 11 x 10 x 8 in. Fremin Gallery, Chelsea, New York.

The material possibilities of paper toward sculptural ends was envisaged by Lisa Meek (Fremin Gallery, Chelsea) with her series of floral paper figures created from the pages of the books on which they rest, and one of them became the structural foundation of a fully functioning music box. Nearby, Pace Gallery (Chelsea) accomplished a similar feat with a series of botanical paper sculptures by Nina Katchadourian called Fake Plants whose baroque presentation offered a pleasing contrast to the booth’s black walls. Charles Clary (Paradigm Gallery, Philadelphia) also worked in a sculptural vein, but through a process of carving in which he cut into VHS boxes and inserted an intricate web of abstract textured layers, which became a form of micro-terracing in the midst of films like RoboCop and Natural Born Killers. Sculptural manipulation was not the only way paper was handled. At Elza Kayal Gallery (Tribeca), Joanne Ungar dazzled with her mini-paintings of foggy colors that flow into one another over the surfaces of repurposed packaging.

Gallerist Debbie Dickinson holding artist Anya Dumcheva's painting while standing in front of works by Al Diaz (back left) and S.L. Fuller (back right)

Illustration - a close companion to paper - also had a terrific representation. Haven Gallery (Northport, New York) zeroed in on a dark, gothic-form of Surrealism through the likes of Michael Parkes’s Alice in Wonderland-esque narratives, Bill Mayer’s animal-human-plant hybrid portraits, and Yoann Lossel’s grim reinterpretation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (just about every work in this booth was displayed in the most gorgeous frames). The Ukrainian-owned Oksana Tanasiv Gallery (Norwalk, Connecticut) had a fabulous display of editorial-style fashion illustrations of Alexander McQueen clothing and style icons Audrey Hepburn and Coco Chanel, which were created by the titular gallerist. Debbie Dickinson, a 1970s supermodel and PR executive, curated a phenomenally diverse range of illustrative works conceived on paper: S.L. Fuller’s lyrically minimalist figurative subjects, psychologist & artist Michael Katz’s mixed media abstractions, Bill Buchman’s jazz-inspired painterly rhythms, and even works by Whitehot’s own Noah Becker and Anthony Haden-Guest. 

Collectible

Collectible, an art & design fair, was the youngest of the fairs during Art Week as 2025 was their second iteration in New York (Collectible has been annually held in Brussels since its founding there in 2018). Something that stood out not long into my visit was that there was no sense of hierarchy within the boundaries of Art, Architecture, and Design, for all were treated as a linked chain of shared aesthetic and utilitarian significance.

(front) Rosati Francesco, Silver Tablecloth - Idea for a Table, 2025. (back) Anna Dawson, 3 sconce lights, 2025.

Though my background is not in design history, I will focus my energies on the inherent artfulness evident in a few standout booths and works. Playinghouse (New York) - whose greenhouse exhibition I reviewed a few months ago - had one of the best booths. Situated before a mint-green background and matching flooring, Rosati Francesco’s sculptural kitchen table’s surface makes abundant use of vegetally-shaped negative space that produces site-specific shadows according to scenic lighting. The contemporary take on the elegance of Art Deco design in Drew McGuskin’s booth (US) was balanced out with the finely detailed nighttime architectural photos of Gail Albert Halaban. Photography’s symbiosis with design came up again in another booth (Emily Thurman Interior Design, US) with Dominik Tarabanski’s meditative still life studies (his work is currently on view at Chelsea’s Ross + Kramer). Atelier Van Lieshout’s geometric sculpture of jutting rectangular masses felt like a marriage between Brutalist architecture and Georges Vantongerloo’s De Stijl associations (The Alchemists, US). Even jewelry had its sculptural moment with the Parisian-based Emma Passera’s ring designs where thick, jagged crystalline minerals are attached to a simplified, metallic support redolent of a plinth or base.

Dominik Tarabanski's photograph in Emily Thurman Interior Design's booth

Stylistic revivalism was a pertinent theme that was noticeable among specific design firms who appear to take their inspirations from key moments in Art History: 1960s Space Age / Cold War Futurism with (I)nterval (US); a harshly rusticated interpretation on the Italian Memphis Group through Lionel Jadot (Belgium); Surrealist assemblage in Tara McAuley’s lamp design (US); or an aquatic Art Nouveau via Tennant New York (US). 

Independent 20th Century

Since its founding in 2022, Independent 20th Century has become a springboard for curators, collectors, art historians, and the public to rediscover works by underrepresented and overlooked artists of the last century. Held at the suave Casa Cipriani Hotel, 31 booths from all over the world converged in presenting the best artists you may not be familiar with, but must now keep on your radar. The triumph of this fair came with the works by artists working after 1950. There were many great paintings, sculptures, and prints shown from the first half of the century, but many of these were by the usual suspects of Modernism (Picasso, Munch, Calder, et al.).

Installation view of Ernie Barnes's (American, 1938 - 2009) paintings at ORTUZAR Projects's booth

African-American painters had an incredible representation in two very different booths. One of the first booths I visited was on The Florida Highwaymen (Jeremy Scholar, London, UK). The Highwaymen were a collective of 26 African-American landscape painters who depicted the endless Summers of the Floridian swamps, beaches, and countrysides in lush, tropical hues. Active from the 1950s through the 1990s, the Highwaymen worked outside of the mainstream art market and resorted to selling their paintings from their cars, which was especially challenging during the brutality of the Jim Crow era. Works by Chico Wheeler, Harold Newton, and Willie Daniels were given pride of place along Jeremy Scholar’s corner booth. Painter Ernie Barnes (ORTUZAR Projects, New York) had his due with a collection of figurative paintings demonstrative of his mastery of portraying the human body with an expressionistic, dance-like gusto, with an emphasis on his athletic subjects in football, track & field, and baseball.

Jacci Den Hartog (American, b. 1962), A View to the West, 1997, polyurethane, plaster, steel. 40 x 20 x 21 in. From Tureen, Dallas, Texas

The 1980s & 1990s must have been an explosively creative period for the Los Angeles art scene as two galleries - which just so happened to be adjacent to one another - each featured a single living artist, both of whom took my breath away. Tureen (Dallas, Texas) presented a body of “landscape sculptures” by Jacci Den Hartog, most of which were floor-based works resembling imaginary landscapes - a fairytale castle inspired by the romantic Neuschwanstein of Germany radiates in a crystalline amethyst shade while a deep valley cuts through a vegetal green mountainscape in another; there was one hanging landscape attached directly to the wall whose extreme verticality could very well be something out of one of the Lord of the Rings films. Make no mistake, these were not miniatures, but works of sculpture that Hartog deliberately positioned within the lineage of Post-Minimalism and Eco-Feminism. 

Sea View (Los Angeles) exhibited works by Bruce Richards, a New York-based artist who was formerly in Los Angeles where he studied under the tutelage of Chris Burden, Robert Irwin, and Vija Celmins. His paintings are a delight for the semiotics aficionado as his images tend to focus on isolated still life subjects situated over an indiscernible background, which are embedded with an inner force that heightens their significance. These "charged talismans" embody the spatial illusionism of John Peto's trompe l'oeil paintings combined with the liminalities of Rene Magritte's Surrealism. Paintings of weather vanes either over a clear or stormy sky seem to signify a direction in Richards's career, either the literalness of his time in California and eventual move to the East Coast or possibly even a metaphorical turn (a new chapter, perhaps?). A four-part series depicting artwork-themed postcards poking out of opened envelopes was a very touching story on the letters exchanged between Richards and his wife (the Man Ray postcard was a favorite for myself and everyone else with whom I conversed). By coincidence, Richards and Hartog were colleagues for a time in Los Angeles, which made the Tureen and Sea View pairing all the more serendipitous! 

Hollis Taggart Gallery (Chelsea) had an excellent show of two maverick painters whose styles were heavily informed by their regional backgrounds: the Hawaiian-born Ralph Iwamoto and Biloxi, Mississippi-native Dusti Bongé, both of whom applied the methodologies of Surrealism into an abstract vein. Meanwhile, photography pushed through with the transgressive, erotic-for-erotic sake penis subjects of Peter Berlin (Mariposa, Los Angeles), the postmodern cool chicness of Jyll Bradley's "queer minimalist" photos (Pi Artworks, London, UK), and the harsh darkness of Ishiuchi Miyako's rarely exhibited Suidobashi (1981) series of raw documentary and autobiographical scenes (Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, UK). 

U-Haul Gallery

For three days, West 22nd & 10th Avenue was transformed into an art-centric block party lined with 12 U-Haul trucks-turned-galleries. By climbing either steel ramps or makeshift stairs, you entered an alternative white cube featuring works by energetic, witty, and bold-thinking artists. The main U-Haul Gallery - distinguished by its attached sign showing its name over a globe - was the principal organizer behind this DIY art fair (with further promotional assistance from members of Chuck Magazine). Much like the booths at Armory or Independent, each of the trucks were represented by a specific gallery, which wound up proving to be a terrific mixture of established New York galleries, independent collectives, and even galleries from outside the city.

Installation view of SOCKO at A Hug from the Art World's truck

Aaron R. Coley, a figurative painter, was the prime focus at the main U-Haul Gallery truck in which his works were partially hidden behind a blue wall that could only be seen up-close via three diamond-shaped windows - a clever curatorial tension on appearance and obfuscation. A Hug from the Art World, always a trailblazer, exhibited a huge body of cartoonish portrait roundels by South Korean artist SOCKO (Sae Hoon Jang) in which each subject is cutified into an animated character with enlarged pupils and cherubic faces that are perfectly spaced along the three walls of the truck. The Lower East Side-based Post Times went for a poetically moving visual discourse centralizing a series of preciously-scaled micro-paintings created as a communicative exchange between the artist couple Bruce Tapola and Melba Price during the first COVID Summer of 2020. The up-and-coming I Made This Up Gallery is a joint NYC-Boston collective comprised exclusively of recently graduated artists from the renowned Boston University MFA Painting program. I was fortunate enough to not only see their remarkable paintings here (which range from Magical Realism to gestural abstraction), but also at the Chelsea-based Morgan Lehman Gallery a few months ago for their thesis show, to which both exhibitions demonstrated the exceptional caliber of BU's painting curriculum. The Los Angeles-based MEY Gallery took a more ethereal, downright Lynchian turn with their Mulholland, Drive! exhibition featuring a motley display of works that - singly and collectively - embodied the neo-noir, dark, dreaminess of a David Lynch film, be it Samuel Alexander Forest's graphite images of an eerie circus performance or Grace Horan's kitschy and sensual lamp that would easily vibe with Wild at Heart (1990).

Installation view of Mulholland, Drive! in MEY Gallery's truck

A special mention must be made for one gallery that was not held in a truck, but in a plastic garbage can - 95 Gallon presented a rotating kinetic sculpture by Hunter MFA student Kian Mckeown in which a two red balls attached to a string thump against the mock white walls in the narrow space, a satirical take on the architecture of the white cube. 

Though a sudden torrential downpour forced the exhibitors to close their trucks early on Saturday, they compensated for lost time by extending viewing hours on Sunday to 8pm, which means that when all of the other art fairs closed, U-Haul became the official denouement of this festive Art Week. WM