The 5 Best Booths at TEFAF New York https://ift.tt/zNqHDAZ

An overcast day on the Upper East Side did little to dampen the spirits at the Park Avenue Armory, as a typically glamorous crowd convened for TEFAF New York 2026.

Marking its 12th edition in New York and its 10th in the May slot, the fair is an established fixture of New York Art Week, complementing the more contemporary-minded fairs taking place this week—such as Independent, NADA, and Frieze—with a more historically focused selection of exhibitors.

That has very much been TEFAF’s stock in trade since it was founded in 1988 in the Dutch city of Maastricht, where the fair claims to present some 7,000 years of art history (something it did with aplomb at its recent outing). There’s a similarly broad attitude at the fair’s stateside edition—ancient sculpture and jewelry can still be found—but with a greater focus on the 20th-century and contemporary art.

In fact, several galleries used the fair to debut new bodies of work altogether, such as Thaddaeus Ropac’s solo presentation of paintings by Eva Helene Pade. Others paired new works with historical counterparts, as in MASSIMODECARLO’s presentation of new paintings by Alvaro Barrington alongside embroideries by Alighiero Boetti. There were solid works from 20th-century favorites throughout: the likes of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Andy Warhol were not in short supply. It’s no surprise, then, that TEFAF ranks among the most expensive fairs of the week—works under $20,000 are a rarity, and many push into the mid-eight figures.

Also not in short supply at the VIP opening day: floral decorations and wine. And cameras and appetites were indulging plentifully in each, respectively. Few art fair opening days are as glamorous.

Here, we present our five best booths from TEFAF New York.

Gagosian

Booth 350

With works by Kathleen Ryan

Cherries, melons, and oranges are among the glittering, rotting fruit sculptures that greet TEFAF visitors upon entry to the Park Avenue Armory’s main hall. Gagosian has given over its booth to Kathleen Ryan, showing new works from her ongoing “Bad Fruit” series. Here, the artist portrays oversized produce in slow decomposition, the mold rendered painstakingly in pearls, opals, agates, and semiprecious crystals, each one fixed in place with a single steel pin.

The works are Ryan’s playful take on the American tradition of pushpin-beaded fruit. Bad Cherries (Princess) (2026) hangs a pair of monumental cherries from a long, conjoined wire stem, the rot scattered across each surface like couture sequins. Bad Lime (Treasure) (2026), meanwhile, leans tall against the wall, its decaying flesh crusted with shells, geodes, and milky cabochons that seem more like a coral reef than fruit at first glance.

Half the fun is in recognizing the rinds of these fruit sculptures, which are sourced from salvaged vehicles: the cool blue arc of Bad Melon (Fantasy) (2026) is a former Volkswagen Beetle, while Bad Melon (Little Chunk & Little Baby Chunk) (2020–24) carries the contour of an Airstream trailer.

Gana Art

Booth 372

With works by Choi Jong-Tae, Yoo Youngkuk, and Park Dae-Sung

Seoul-based Gana Art gathers standout works by three Korean masters: the abstract painter Yoo Youngkuk, the sculptor Choi Jong-Tae, and the ink painter Park Dae-Sung—three figures whose careers map the relationship between Western modernism and Korean tradition.

Yoo’s Mountain (1972) anchors one side of the booth: an immediately recognizable example of his bold, color-saturated, geometrically simplified abstractions. Choi’s sculptures, meanwhile, are spread throughout—fine bronze and painted-wood examples of his figures and “faces,” rendered almost in silhouette, with sharply angled jaws and features reduced to a few faint marks. Face (1997), a roughly 30-inch bronze, retains a curious flatness, even in three dimensions.

On the other side of the booth, Park’s Guryong Waterfall (2026), made for the fair, returns to one of his most enduring subjects: the Nine Dragons Falls of Mt. Geumgangsan, in North Korea. Park works in the centuries-old Korean sansuhwa (mountain-and-water) ink tradition; here, monumental cliffs are rendered in dense, forceful black ink, while a single thin ribbon of water descends through the center in delicately diluted, almost ghostly strokes. “Using sumi ink with the brushstroke requires such a high level of control,” said Jung Yeon Park, the artist’s daughter.

That technical control is all the more striking given Park’s extraordinary biography: He lost his parents and half of his left arm during the Korean War at the age of four and is largely self-taught. A recent traveling U.S. museum tour at stops including LACMA has positioned him as one of the most institutionally celebrated living Korean painters. Prices for Park’s works range from $50,000 to $100,000.

Galerie Patrick Seguin

Booth 331

With works by Jean Prouvé

Paris-based Galerie Patrick Seguin assembles one of the most museum-like booths of this year’s fair: a tightly organized survey of Jean Prouvé’s architecture, presented through 12 scale models, explanatory texts, and archival video. Prouvé was known for his prefabricated metal structures. The models aren’t for sale here—the buildings are, and the dealer’s staff will assemble them for the buyer. “The smallest can be built in [one day] by four people,” gallery founder Patrick Seguin told Artsy.

Works span 1940 to 1956 (Prouvé’s most fertile years), and two pieces stand out. The Villa Lopez (1953), which was nicknamed Ombres Bleues for its tinted blue aluminum panels, is being shown publicly for the first time and is the most architecturally ambitious of the lot. A one-off, free-form variation on the standardized system, it was designed for a single family rather than mass-produced. The Better Days (1956) house, designed for an emergency-housing campaign for the Paris homeless, gathers a circular concrete utility core with prefabricated panels radiating outward like petals, and is seen as Prouvé’s most idealistic, and most famously thwarted, social commission.

Around them, the other models prove the consistency of Prouvé’s “constructive system” across radically different functions and scales: the lightweight SCAL 8x8 pavilion (1940), made with Pierre Jeanneret, the 6x6 and 6x9 emergency housing units (1944), conceived for families displaced by the war, the 8x8 reconstruction unit (1945), and the Carnac vacation house (1946), among others.

“They are historical, inspiring, and a real manifestation of architecture,” Seguin enthused. Prices range from $1.8 million to $12 million.

Yares Art

Booth 338

With works by Anthony Caro, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, and David Smith

In its TEFAF booth, local stalwart Yares Art presents a selection of works by Anthony Caro, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, and David Smith: a quartet of painter-and-sculptor friends whose transatlantic exchanges helped shape American post-war abstraction.

The anchor is a Frankenthaler-Caro pairing. In Frankenthaler’s Gliding Figure (1961), a long, mustard-yellow brushstroke loops across the upper half of the canvas, while a soft, burnt-orange shape sits inside, its edges bleeding into the cloth: A sterling example of her “soak-stain” technique, in which thinned paint is poured directly onto canvas and allowed to seep. Across from it, Caro’s Silver Piece XXVIII (1984–85) is a low-slung assemblage of polished, curved, welded steel components from his “Silver” series.

“Frankenthaler and Caro were friends from 1959 until she passed away in 2011,” gallery founder Dennis Yares told Artsy. “Though Helen was a painter, she learned sculpting from Caro. And though Caro was a sculptor, he learned painting from Helen. So it’s a 50-plus-year friendship.”

The conversation widens around them. Two Motherwell “Open” paintings—Open #184 (1969) and Scarlet Open (1972)—date almost exactly to the years he was married to Frankenthaler and trades her stained forms for a few charcoal lines sketching a doorway across a flat field of color. Smith’s Voltron XXIV (1963), a nearly eight-foot column of welded steel made two years before his death, supplies the heavy sculptural counterweight that had such an influence on Caro. Prices range from $250,000 to $3.2 million, with the Smith price undisclosed.

Friedman Benda

Booth 325

With works by Wendell Castle, John Chamberlain, Nicole Cherubini, Frida Escobedo, Shiro Kuramata, Joris Laarman, nendo, Gerrit Rietveld, Samuel Ross, Osamu Suzuki, and Faye Toogood

Red Blue Chair, first half of the 1920s 
Gerrit Thomas Rietveld
Friedman Benda

Stool Sculpture, 1959
Wendell Castle
Friedman Benda

Design heavyweight Friedman Benda frames its stylish booth around “revisiting modernism,” according to gallery co-founder Marc Benda.

“We have this very one-dimensional idea of modernism that it’s all very rational and straight lines and glass and steel,” he told Artsy. “But in reality, modernism, as it developed over time, is a license for creatives to really expand and experiment.”

A standout is an early example of Gerrit Thomas Rietveld’s Red Blue Chair (1920s). It’s an icon of Dutch De Stijl (the style) design—a chair built from intersecting wooden slats and two flat planks, the back painted red, the seat blue, the structural frame black pocked with bright yellow—and it looks like a three-dimensional Piet Mondrian painting. An early Wendell Castle work of stack-laminated, hand-carved walnut showcases the American artist’s organic approach.

Two slender posts rise into forked Y-shaped tops, with a small scooped seat hovering near the floor: It looks half furniture, half creature. Nearby, a small, dark bronze by John Chamberlain, made before he switched to his signature technique with crushed auto-body parts, welds thin vertical rods and horizontal bars into a compact, near-architectural diagram.

Red Blue Chair, first half of the 1920s 
Gerrit Thomas Rietveld
Friedman Benda

Stool Sculpture, 1959
Wendell Castle
Friedman Benda

Roly-Poly Chair / Water, 2016
Faye Toogood
Friedman Benda

Optimistic uncertainties solicit integration (Material Articulation), 2021
Samuel Ross
Friedman Benda

Ply Loop Console, 2026
Joris Laarman
Friedman Benda

Untitled, 1954
John Chamberlain
Friedman Benda

Creek Bench, 2022
Frida Escobedo
Friedman Benda

Dogū, 1960
Osamu Suzuki
Friedman Benda

hyouri R (Pendant), 2024
nendo
Friedman Benda

hyouri S (Pendant), 2024
nendo
Friedman Benda

Love seat, left, 2026
Nicole Cherubini
Friedman Benda

Love seat, right, 2026
Nicole Cherubini
Friedman Benda

Chair from the Soseikan Yamaguchi House (1974-75), Takarazuka, Hyogo, Japan, 1975-1976
Shiro Kuramata
Friedman Benda

On the more contemporary side, Joris Laarman’s console Ply Loop shield (wall) (2025) picks up the modernist preoccupation with technology and craft. Intricately curved plywood produced through digital fabrication appears to emerge through the wall. Elsewhere, a tall hanging sculpture by the Japanese studio nendo, composed of finely milled ivory laths stacked into tiered hexagonal volumes, adds a spectral note to a corner of the booth. Prices range from $22,000 to $500,000.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will merge with the Neue Galerie. https://ift.tt/la3OsZj

New York’s the Neue Galerie has announced it will merge with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2028. The institution will be renamed to the Met Ronald S. Lauder Neue Galerie, known as the Met Neue Galerie. The merger, announced Thursday, was arranged to ensure that the museum and its collection remain intact when its founder, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, will no longer be around.

“This represents an enormous opportunity,” said the Met’s director Max Hollein, who has also served on the board of the Neue for 20 years, in an interview with the New York Times. “It allows us to be the custodian, not only of an enormous amount of very important works of art, but also of a place with profound integrity and beauty and vision.”

The Neue Galerie was established in 2001 and is devoted to early 20th-century Austrian and German art and design. The collection is made up of works belonging to Lauder, the estate of Serge Sabarsky, and the museum itself. Highlights include Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1903–07), otherwise known as the Woman in Gold; as well Egon Schiele’s Town among the Greenery (1917); and Max Beckmann’s Self-Portrait with Horn (1938). Works by Oskar Kokoschka, Josef Hoffmann, and Otto Wagner are also included, as are many figures associated with the Bauhaus including László Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Oskar Schlemmer.

An endowment, estimated around $200 million, has been established to preserve and care for the Neue Galerie by Lauder and his daughter, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer. They have also donated 13 paintings from their personal collection to the combined museums, including Die Tänzerin (The Dancer) (1016–18) by Gustav Klimt, Die Russiche Tänzerin Mela (The Russian Dancer Mela) (1911) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Galleria Umberto (1925) by Max Beckmann.

Stipulations surrounding the merger indicate that while the Met may borrow artworks from the Neue to display in their flagship Fifth Avenue location, Klimt’s Woman in Gold must remain where it is. Lauder refers to the piece as his museum’s Mona Lisa.

The Neue will close on May 27th as planned to undergo infrastructure renovations, and will reopen this fall with an exhibition celebrating its 25th anniversary.

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$2.2 million El Anatsui work leads Frieze New York 2026 sales. https://ift.tt/yZYtPqD

Frieze New York 2026 kicked off its 15th edition at The Shed in Manhattan on Wednesday, May 13th with a VIP preview that drew a smart mix of collectors, museum heads, artists, and other cultural figures. 68 galleries from 25 countries are participating in this year’s fair, which runs through May 17th.

Among those in attendance on Wednesday were boldface names including Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Fox, and Sharon Stone, in addition to major collectors and patrons including Don and Mera Rubell, Beth Rudin DeWoody, and Glenn Fuhrman. Museum directors and institutional leaders came out in droves, among them the Serpentine Galleries’s artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak. Artists Dustin Yellin, Emma Webster, and Jungjin Lee attended as well.

The fair’s preview day saw strong sales across blue chip and emerging artists alike. A few galleries reported sales that surpassed seven figures, led by White Cube, who sold two major pieces by El Anatsui: LuwVor I (2025) for $2.2 million and MivEvi III (2025) for $1.9 million. At Thaddaeus Ropac, Georg Baselitz’s oil painting Stunde der Nachtigall (2012) sold for €1.4 million ($1.63 million), while Almine Rech offloaded a light work by James Turrell that is valued between $900,000 and $1,000,000.

While Public Gallery, with a presentation of works by Reika Takebayashi, was the only booth reported to have sold out thus far, a few other galleries including Mendes Wood DM, Ortuzar Projects, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art finished the day with only one or two remaining works available.

And as part of the inaugural year of the Sherman Family Foundation Acquisition Fund, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art acquired a handful of works by artists including Bettina, Reika Takebayashi, Joanne Burke, and Seba Calfuqueo, whose solo booth with W-Galería won the gallery the 2026 Focus Stand Prize. As part of the Sherman Family Foundation Acquisition Fund, each artist will receive an unrestricted award of $5,000.

Below, Artsy rounds up a selection of leading sales reports by galleries at Frieze New York 2026. Check back on Monday for our full sales report.

Leading sales from Frieze New York 2026:

• Gagosian had a strong opening day, placing works by a number of artists on their roster including Derrick Adams, Helen Frankenthaler, Gerhard Richter, Adriana Varejão, Stanley Whitney, and Francesca Woodman. The gallery does not disclose sales, though according to Artnews, a large piece by Sarah Sze was placed on hold.
• In addition to the El Anatsui works, White Cube also sold Antony Gormley’s SET VII (2024) for £450,000 ($606,360); Howardena Pindell’s painting Deep Space #4 (2025) for $275,000; and a Julie Curtiss work on paper for $35,000.
• Thaddaeus Ropac reported a number of sales, including a silkscreen ink and acrylic on canvas piece by Robert Rauschenberg for $825,000; an oil painting by Alex Katz for $600,000; and an ink pen on paper work by Georg Baselitz for €85,000 ($99,250).
• Almine Rech sold multiple works, including a large-scale painting by Virginia Jaramillo, the centerpiece of their solo booth, for $540,000.
• Kukje Gallery saw a lot of activity on opening day, selling two works by Ha Chong-Hyun ranging between $390,000 to $468,000 and another between $10,000 to $12,000; an Ugo Rondinone sculpture in the range of $90,000 to $108,000; and a mosaic work by Julian Opie in the range of £45,000 to £54,000 ($60,650 to $72,790).
• Tina Kim Gallery sold a number of works ranging from $180,000 to $20,000, including a Maia Ruth Lee painting priced between $70,000 and $80,000 and a ceramic sculpture by Jane Yang D’Haene priced between $20,000 and $30,000.
• At Southern Guild, four print works by Lebohang Kganye each sold in the range of $20,000 to $38,000; two oil paintings by Mmangaliso Nzuza each sold between $20,000 and $38,000; and two works by Amine El Gotaibi each sold in the range of $20,000 to $38,000.

Mendes Wood DM finished the day with only one work remaining. Strong sales across the day include pieces from Sonia Gomes, Mimi Lauter, Paulo Nimer Pjota, and Pol Taburet.

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The 5 Best Booths at Frieze New York 2026 https://ift.tt/UfSIiaT

Frieze New York 2026 opened its VIP day at The Shed on Wednesday, May 13, hard on the heels of the Venice Biennale’s opening week—the latest major stop on a packed run of international openings, events, and previews for the contemporary art world.

Now in its 15th edition, the fair anchors New York Art Week, the rolling tangle of fairs, gallery openings, auctions, and parties that takes over the city each May. When the art world arrives in New York, it arrives in numbers: Fellow fairs NADA New York and 1-54 New York opened nearby, and a wave of Chelsea gallery openings just south of Hudson Yards picked up where the fair left off into the evening.

With 68 galleries, Frieze New York is the smallest of Frieze’s editions—London remains its flagship—but it carries the megafair’s signature mix: works by some of contemporary art’s household names, booths from leading contemporary dealers, and a packed opening-day crowd of VIPs dressed to impress.

The Venice overlap was unmistakable. Alvaro Barrington and Carolina Caycedo, both included in the Biennale’s main exhibition “In Minor Keys,” can be found here at Emalin and Anton Kern, and at Instituto de Visión, respectively. Other names that caught Artsy’s eye: Adriana Varejão (Brazilian pavilion) at Gagosian; Nabil Nahas (Lebanese pavilion), in a shared booth between Lawrie Shabibi and P420; Sara Flores (Peruvian pavilion) at White Cube; and Precious Okoyomon (The Holy See pavilion) at Mendes Wood DM.

The mood on the fair’s VIP day was engaged and energetic. By lunchtime, The Shed’s aisles and escalators were at capacity, with a strong local turnout and a notable international contingent on the floor. Celebrities, too, were out in force throughout the day. Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Stipe appeared during the fair’s opening hours, while later in the day, Julia Fox reportedly pulled up in her Dodge Challenger.

The enthusiasm swiftly began to translate to firm buying activity. White Cube reported an early sale of an El Anatsui work, LuwVor I (2025), for $2.2 million. Indeed, it was one of many significant transactions on the fair floors—a more positive opening day, perhaps, than initially expected. “You could feel a real sales energy moving through the aisles. In my art advisor circles, collectors were acquiring at a clip,” advisor Jessica Arb Danial told Artsy.

“Many of my collectors still want to see works in person, hence the number of holds I was encountering, yet dealers seemed optimistic, and there was an urgency that hasn’t been as present for recent fairs,” she added.

Check back on Monday after the fair for our full rundown of reported sales from The Shed. Here, we share our five best booths from Frieze New York 2026.

Victoria Miro

Booth A07

Works by Milton Avery, Ali Banisadr, Hernan Bas, María Berrío, Saskia Colwell, Stan Douglas, Elmgreen & Dragset, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Chantal Joffe, Isaac Julien, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Celia Paul, Paula Rego, Emil Sands, Khalif Tahir Thompson, and Barbara Walker.

Victoria Miro’s booth buzzed with ebullient energy during the opening hours of Frieze New York this year, with collectors congregating amid the London gallery’s presentation of works by artists including Alice Neel, Chantal Joffe, and Hernan Bas.

The showcase brought together a mix of historic and contemporary works that spanned painting, drawing, and photography. Many of the pieces in the booth explore figuration and its changing role across art history. Anchoring the booth is Paula Rego’s large-scale work on paper, The Death of the Blind Sister (2007), depicting a monumental, careening female body—emblematic of the Portuguese artist’s dynamic style. The work complements the exhibition “Paula Rego: Story Line,” the largest ever exhibition of her works on paper, now on view at the gallery in London.

Isaac Julien’s Black Apollo diptych (Once Again... Statues Never Die) (2022), a photographic work based on the artist’s film installation Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), shows a young Black man posing in an artist’s studio, dressed as the god Apollo. The work is a poetic engagement with questions of the collection and restitution of African art. Also tucked in the booth, but not to be missed, are works on paper by artist Barbara Walker, who joined the gallery last year. These pieces from the artist’s ongoing “Vanishing Point” series focus on Black figures in the history of the Western canon, through a process of embossing and drawing.

—Katie White

Perrotin

Booth B3

With works by Genesis Belanger, Alma Allen, JR, Thilo Heinzmann, Jean-Marie Appriou, Daniel Arsham, Bernard Frize, Laurent Grasso, Todd Gray, Hans Hartung, Leslie Hewitt, Gregor Hildebrandt, Gabriel de la Mora, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Paul Pfeiffer, Josh Sperling, Pieter Vermeersch, and Emma Webster.

French powerhouse Perrotin hands over half its booth to sculptor Genesis Belanger. She pays homage to a more innocent age of incipient technology in her signature register of pastel-toned stoneware and porcelain.

“The work on our booth explores human relationships to nature, which is becoming more distant over time,” said senior gallery director Valentine Blondel. “As a society, we are progressing quickly in the direction of artificial intelligence, so there has become a prevailing nostalgia for these symbols of outdated technology.”

At the booth’s center is a tall fruit tree sprouting blush-pink roses and pomegranates from verdigris foliage, planted in a deep navy urn; alongside it, floral mosaic reliefs in dusty pinks, blues, and oranges nod to medieval tapestries.

Meanwhile, Dreams of the Luddite (2026) assembles a folding tabletop tableau around a ’90s flip phone. Reduction in Force (2026) hangs a hollow, beige cardigan over a slim green tie on a wall hook—a rejoinder, perhaps, to AI’s erosion of white-collar labor. Above it all presides Darkest Hour(s) (2026), a wall clock with its hands stopped mid-tick, time suspended in what the booth text ominously calls a “moment of uncertain future.” Belanger’s works are priced between $25,000–$175,000.

Indeed, the presentation lands at a timely moment for Belanger, whose Public Art Fund commission at City Hall Park opens in June. The other half of Perrotin’s booth doubles as the gallery’s institutional CV, with works by Alma Allen (artist of the U.S. pavilion at Venice), Hans Hartung (who has a show at Venice’s Querini Stampalia), Todd Gray (whose new commission greets visitors to LACMA’s Geffen Galleries), and JR (whose work will adorn Paris’s Pont Neuf in June).

—Arun Kakar

Southern Guild

Booth D07

Works by Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Patrick Bongoy, Sandra Brewster, Chloe Chiasson, Amine El Gotaibi, Jozua Gerrard, Lebohang Kganye, Manyaku Mashilo, Roméo Mivekannin, Zanele Muholi, Napoles Marty, Mmangaliso Nzuza, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Zizipho Poswa, and Chidy Wayne

Southern Guild underscores its burgeoning presence in the New York art world with a power-packed Frieze presentation. The booth features works by Zanele Muholi, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and Amine El Gotaibi. The Cape Town gallery, helmed by couple Trevyn and Julian McGowan, has built an international reputation as a leading platform for African art since opening in 2008. Earlier this spring, the gallery inaugurated an airy new space in Tribeca, New York’s hottest gallery neighborhood; exhibitions of work by Johannesburg-based conceptual artist Usha Seejarim and Cape Town painter Mmangaliso Nzuza are currently on view.

“Frieze New York this year feels like an important moment for Southern Guild as we participate for the first time as a New York-based gallery,” shared Trevyn McGowan. “The booth reflects the material ambition, emotional depth, and cultural dialogue that have long defined our program. To share these works in New York, just weeks after opening our Tribeca space, feels especially resonant.”

While the booth has plenty of photo-ready, large-scale works, don’t overlook Lebohang Kganye’s intimate and ghostly photographs from her 2013 series “Ke Lefa Laka: Her-Story,” where she double-exposes images of her late mother with her own image.

—K.W.

Karma

Booth B2

Works by Alan Saret, Peter Bradley, Matthew Wong, Jeremy Frey, Manoucher Yektai, Milton Avery, Randy Wray, Ann Craven, Dike Blair, Marley Freeman, Maja Ruznic, Tabboo!, Andrew Cranston, Jonas Wood, Xiao Jiang, Jane Dickson, William Turnbull, Mathew Cerletty, Woody De Othello, Richard Mayhew, Henni Alftan, Jacob Littlejohn, Keith Mayerson, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Will Boone, Gertrude Abercrombie, Hughie Lee-Smith, Nathaniel Oliver, Ryan Preciado, Mungo Thomson, Sanaa Gateja, Arthur Simms, Carole Vanderlinden, Norman Zammitt, Ulala Imai, Bill Bollinger

Karma manages to keep its refined edge—even at Frieze’s blockbuster platform. This year, the Chelsea gallery stages a best-in-class sampling of more than 30 artists across modern and contemporary.

"Our presentation brings together historic artists, including Milton Avery and Manoucher Yektai, alongside contemporary practitioners such as Ann Craven and Peter Bradley, whose practices reflect New York City's enduring artistic legacy," noted a representative of the gallery.

Showstoppers include a petite Gertrude Abercrombie from 1938 and a sunkissed and thickly impastoed Matthew Wong painting, as well as prints on paper by Jeremy Frey, an Indigenous artist from Maine. “Permanence,” his exhibition of masterful basket weavings, is on view at the gallery through July 10th.

—K.W.

A Gentil Carioca

Booth B17

With works by Agrade Camíz, Ana Silva, Arjan Martins, Denilson Baniwa, Jarbas Lopes, João Modé, Kelton Campos Fausto, Laura Lima, Marcela Cantuária, Maria Nepomuceno, Mariana Rocha, Miguel Afa, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Rose Afefé, Vinícius Gerheim, and Vivian Caccuri.

Love is in the air, on the floor, and across the walls of the booth by Brazilian gallery A Gentil Carioca, organized around the theme of “red.”

“We decided to do a booth connected with ‘red,’ connected with the idea of love, of passion, of good energy that I think we need in the world,” the gallery’s co-founder, Marcio Botner, told Artsy.

The theme manifests most immediately as a red carpet punctuated by a monochrome snake drawing by the Indigenous Brazilian artist Denilson Baniwa, whose graphic vocabulary draws from Indigenous Baniwa cosmology and Amazonian iconography (a related creature by the artist currently appears on a Times Square billboard).

From there, the crimson unfurls in many registers. Maria Nepomuceno contributes one of her signature coiled sculptures—rope, ceramic, and beads spiraling outward like a circulatory system in slow bloom. A tarot-inflected painting by Marcela Cantuária depicts female revolutionaries, environmental martyrs, and Latin American activists rendered in saturated, almost devotional reds; nearby, Vivian Caccuri’s embroidered mosquito-net works stitch fine threads into a speaker-like mesh that conjures insects and instruments at once.

A playfully thematic booth with bite, the presentation showcases a gallery not short on curatorial confidence—nor on artists to pull off its ambitious premise.

—A.K.

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11 Contemporary Emirati Artists To Know https://ift.tt/cQtk1yS

It’s been quite a year for art in the Gulf area. In early February, the debut of Art Basel Qatar brought international art world attention to the region. A few weeks later, the U.S. attacks on Iran created turmoil across the Gulf and led airlines to cease operations to Qatar, the U.A.E., and nearby locales. The conflict has impacted plans for Art Dubai, which had to scale back its event to a smaller, more focused fair in mid-May.

Artists and galleries in the Gulf had to momentarily close their spaces and postpone exhibition openings. They are slowly resuming operations, with several participating in overseas events, including Frieze New York. Some might be wondering how the U.A.E., which has been described as a new center of the art world, will emerge from the crisis. Yet its achievements over the past couple of decades remain unchanged: Thanks in part to government support, creative activity has boomed across Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi, with each emirate embracing its own cultural offering.

This boom is actually the result of decades of hard work. Since the 1980s, shortly after the country’s unification in 1971, the domestic art scene slowly developed thanks to the establishment of pioneering institutions such as Emirates Fine Arts Society in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, which were established in 1980 and 1981, respectively. Such associations were crucial platforms for new ideas, arts education, and showcases for domestic talents.

My Garden's Details, 2021
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim
Lawrie Shabibi

Kisses, 2023
Mohammed Kazem
Baró Galeria

This was also an era when forward-thinking artists who were educated abroad, such as Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Abdullah Al Saadi, Hussain Sharif, and Mohammed Kazem—collectively known as “The Group of Five”—broke free from traditional art and the canvas. They embraced more experimental modes of self-expression, including performance art, land art, and Conceptual art.

Such figures paved the way for today’s young, driven, and internationally visible Emirati artists. They observe their country’s rapid social changes as well as world events and universal concepts, which shape both their lives and art.

From up-and-coming talents to established names, here are 11 Emirati artists to keep an eye on.

Alia Zaal

B. 1989, Dubai. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Vétheuil, 2021
Alia Zaal
Hunna Art

Alia Zaal is an award-winning artist who has also curated exhibitions that generate dialogues among the U.A.E.’s multigenerational artists. She earned her MA degree in art history and museum studies at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi and has exhibited her nature-inspired paintings in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Spain, and other locations.

Zaal’s mesmerizing, verdant canvases reflect her homeland’s natural landscape and often focus on one subject—a tree or a mangrove, for example—during different times of day. The results are often lush and green. The desert-grown ghaf, the U.A.E.’s national tree, is a recurring, particularly personal motif.

In 2022, the artist completed a residency at Maison Oscar-Claude Monet, a house in the French village of Vétheuil formerly occupied by Impressionist master and water-lily enthusiast Claude Monet. At the residency, Zaal researched light, color, neurological perception, and eyesight.

Afra Al Dhaheri

B. 1988, Abu Dhabi. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

After Afra Al Dhaheri attended Rhode Island School of Design nearly a decade ago, she returned home to Abu Dhabi and has gradually earned international acclaim. Her work has appeared in the Aichi Triennale, Taipei Biennial, and Sharjah Art Foundation. Al Dhaheri recently participated in the third edition of the Diriyah Biennale in Riyadh, which closed in early May.

The artist takes inspiration from her own experiences of girlhood and womanhood in the U.A.E. The country has undergone rapid changes in infrastructure and social norms since her birth in the late 1980s. From delicate sculptures made of glass to large-scale, cotton rope installations, the artist’s meticulous, labor-intensive work quietly addresses time, repetition, fragility, and tension. Al Dhaheri is continually experimenting with new materials: Once, she even used her own hair in a piece.

Almaha Jaralla

B. 1996, Abu Dhabi. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Almaha Jaralla often paints from old snapshots and her family’s archives in order to capture the intimacy of a slowly fading, close-knit community. Her compositions explore memory and belonging, pulling the viewer into hazy scenes of family beach outings and indoor gatherings. The subjects’ faces are mysteriously blurry, like fuzzy recollections. Jaralla’s preferred shades of sandy brown and cool blue evoke her youth in the Emirati capital. The urban landscape of Abu Dhabi, where she was born and raised, is another frequent motif. The artist creates quiet and isolated compositions of the city’s houses, some decades-old. Jaralla has exhibited her paintings at Abu Dhabi Art and Sotheby’s Dubai, as well as her representing gallery, Dubai’s Tabari Artspace.

Ammar Al Attar

B. 1981, Dubai. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Untitled, 2025
Ammar Al Attar
IRIS PROJECTS

Ammar Al Attar is an Ajman-based photographer who captures images of daily life, Muslim prayer rooms, café culture, and various sites across the Gulf region. An element of experimentation is key to his recent photography: Al Attar manipulates predominantly black-and-white images marked by contrasting little spots of color that focus on repetition, routine, and the relationship between everyday objects and human action. One of his most recognizable images is Cycle of Circles (2025), in which he bicycles in circles. The artist aims to convey the importance of slowing down in a fast-paced world. Al Attar’s works have entered the collections of Sharjah Art Foundation, Barjeel Art Foundation, and the British Museum.

Hashel Al Lamki

B. 1986, Al Ain, U.A.E. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Lobster , 2022
Hashel Al Lamki
Tabari Artspace

New York–educated Hashel Al Lamki implements loose brushwork and mesmerizing washes of color across his large-scale canvases. They explore personal memory, migration, and the deep relationships between humans and their habitats. The Al Ain–born painter often injects images of modern, everyday objects into his dreamlike compositions, commenting on the world’s changing times. “There is this constant motion that I try to capture, and I think it’s important to be able to look at that and examine what is happening,” he previously said in a video interview produced by Dubai’s Tabari Artspace. “That’s what my practice is all about—looking with a critical eye as an outsider, but also someone from there, to be able to tell a story of the current time.” An emerging talent with a growing presence on the international art circuit, Al Lamki has participated in Gwangju Biennale, Biennale de Lyon, the African Biennale of Photography, and the Noor Riyadh festival.

Maitha Abdalla

B. 1989, Khor Fakkan, U.A.E. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

The Silence in Carnivals, 2021
Maitha Abdalla
Baró Galeria

Abu Dhabi–based painter, sculptor, and performance artist Maitha Abdalla creates theatrical scenes and narratives throughout her work. Myths from the U.A.E. and the wider region are at the heart of her practice and include the stories the artist’s grandmother told her as a child. Abdalla paints distorted figures who often feature both human and animal parts and serve as vessels for emotions and metaphors for human nature. Her bold, passionate style infuses her characters and landscapes with a scribbly, smoky effect. Over the last decade, Abdalla has been included in over 15 group exhibitions at regional and international venues such as Palazzo Franchetti in Venice, Fine Arts Society in Sharjah, and the European Parliament in Brussels. She recently showed a number of her pieces, including photography, at the “Proximities” exhibition at the Seoul Museum of Art. The show brought together over 40 U.A.E.-based artists.

Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim

B. 1962, Khor Fakkan, U.A.E. Lives and works in Khor Fakkan.

My Garden's Details, 2021
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim
Lawrie Shabibi

One Pink Flower in a Vase , 2018
Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim
Lawrie Shabibi

Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim has become one of the U.A.E.’s most established artists and has witnessed the remarkable rise of the country’s art scene. Ibrahim has been painting since the 1980s. He’s inspired by his mountainous hometown of Khor Fakkan, which informs his vibrant canvases, filled with symbols that derive from nature.

Ibrahim, who notably represented the U.A.E. at the Venice Biennale in 2022, is also known for his experimental papier-mâché sculptures that take on a variety of eclectic, playful, creature-like forms, such as One Pink Flower in a Vase (2018) and Dancer Contessa (2020). A landmark retrospective of Ibrahim’s career, entitled “Two Clouds in the Night Sky,” was on view at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi through last February. Curated by Noor AlMehairbi and Medyyah AlTamimi, it showcased a wide selection of the artist’s sculptures and paintings—including one of the very first artworks he made back in 1989, which featured his first experimentation with ciphers—an intriguing visual language that lives on in his canvases today.

Mohammed Kazem

B. 1969, Dubai. Lives and works in Dubai.

My Studio, 1994
Mohammed Kazem
Salwa Zeidan Gallery

Coordinates-N° DR 1 (Pink), 2021
Mohammed Kazem
Samuelis Baumgarte

Along with his contemporary Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Mohammed Kazem was a prominent member of the so-called “Group of Five,” pioneering artists who shaped culture in the 1980s. Over the course of his career, Kazem has experimented with film, video, and performance, reflecting on personal experiences and his close surroundings.

One of Kazem’s most compelling, multi-year series is “Window,” which he began in 2023. These paintings thoughtfully depict snapshots of the U.A.E.’s migrant laborers, whether working outside in the heat or resting in their intimate quarters. Thanks to this delicate subject matter, Kazem’s series was once described by the Emirati art patron and founder of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, as one of the most important works to come out of the country.

Mohamed Al Mazrouei

B. 1962, Tanta, Egypt. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

Born and raised in Egypt, Mohamed Al Mazrouei is a longtime writer, photographer, and painter. He was a student of ancient languages and philosophy at Al Azhar University in Cairo, which fed his poetry and short stories, as well as his visual work. His intense, expressionistic paintings of humans and animals feature thick lines, dark eyes, and unusual shades of color. His figures’ facial features are also inspired by art history, particularly Coptic and Fayum portraiture from ancient Egypt. Sometimes, there’s a captivating chaos in his smudged style and facial arrangements. Holy figures of Christianity are also recurring motifs; his late mother, who passed away young, owned an image of the Virgin Mary that still haunts him. In recent years, Al Mazrouei has exhibited at Aisha Al Abbar Gallery (Dubai), Iyad Qanazea Gallery (Abu Dhabi), and New York University Abu Dhabi.

Sarah Almehairi

B. 1998, Abu Dhabi. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi.

An arts graduate of New York University Abu Dhabi, the emerging artist Sarah Almehairi has worked in fiber art, sculpture, drawing, collage, and other media. Her mother’s craft shop in Abu Dhabi exposed her to creativity as a child. Almehairi is now inspired by Cubism and Abstract Expressionism; her clean-cut, geometric works combine painting and sculpture as they examine themes of materiality, systems, and correlations. Almehairi has hosted art workshops at Expo 2025 Osaka and displayed a public installation at Louvre Abu Dhabi as part of the Richard Mille Art Prize. In February 2026, she showcased her work in a solo presentation with Dubai-based gallery Carbon 12 at Art Basel Qatar.

Shaikha Al Mazrou

B. 1988, Sharjah, U.A.E. Lives and works in Dubai.

Expand, 2018
Shaikha Al Mazrou
Lawrie Shabibi

There is more than meets the eye in Shaikha Al Mazrou’s sculptures, which appear to be inflated plastic but are in fact made of metal. While they look simple in form, they make the viewer question what they know of the physical world. Educated in London, Al Mazrou is inspired by Minimalism, Conceptual art, and the Bauhaus movement. Through her signature pillow-shaped pieces, usually made of wet-coated steel, Al Mazrou explores color theory, materiality, and geometric abstraction. Al Mazrou has mounted public art installations at Expo 2020 Dubai, Frieze Sculpture London, and Desert X AlUla. Her most recent project, a calming, rippling light installation—“The Contingent Object”—was featured at Manar Abu Dhabi, an open-air light art festival that takes place in the Emirati capital.

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