8 Contemporary Artists Inspired By René Magritte https://ift.tt/04qlk9f

The work of René Magritte needs little introduction. Since his death in 1967, he has become one of the defining painters of the 20th century, his work influencing generations of artists while also permeating the world of popular culture at almost every level. Referenced by everyone from The Beatles to The Simpsons, his visual vocabulary—bowler-hatted men, veiled faces, enormous apples, and levitating rocks—has left a profound mark on the worlds of advertising, graphic design, film, and photography.

No other artist fused the ordinary with the uncanny so seamlessly, or shifted so effortlessly between a sense of ambiguity, dread, and deadpan humor tinged with occasional vulgarity. His enigmatic paintings, such as The Treachery of Images (1929) or The Human Condition (1933), transform everyday objects, places, and figures into surreal, psychologically charged puzzles. Combining an almost hyperrealist style with jarring shifts of scale, trompe l’oeil illusions, and visual fragmentation, his works raise fundamental questions about the boundaries between reality and representation.

Now, a major new exhibition at Gagosian in London seeks to trace his enduring legacy on the art world. “This is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte” (through December 12) brings together dozens of the artist’s key paintings and works on paper, setting them in dialogue with work by almost 50 contemporary artists.

As Jasper Sharp, the show’s co-curator, explained to Artsy, Magritte’s influence is by no means a recent phenomenon. “You have artists who were already making work in the ’50s thinking about Magritte, so his influence was already taking shape while he was still alive.” But the idea for the current show evolved when it became clear how great a shadow his work still casts in the 21st century. “Over the past few years, I've found myself having so many conversations about Magritte, unprompted by myself, with painters, filmmakers, and photographers.”

For Sharp, the explanation for this is twofold. “I think the reason that his works have such an enduring appeal is that they disclose themselves very quickly. But, like all really interesting art, they also work on a different level. They’re not completely understandable.” At the same time, his work is technically masterful, another source of inspiration for artists. As Sharp pointed ut, “Max Ernst famously described Magritte as a collagist in paint. Which is why he’s been so influential in the graphic design industry, the music industry, and the fashion industry. The way his works are constructed with different surfaces, different depths, gives so much potential to people who want to take his ideas and run with them.”

With this in mind, here are eight contemporary artists who share some affinity with Magritte’s themes and approach. The first four are featured in the Gagosian show, while the others are our own recommendations.

Lenz Geerk

B. 1988, Basel. Lives and works in Düsseldorf.

Tie III, 2024
Lenz Geerk
Roberts Projects

Man holding the night sky, 2024
Lenz Geerk
Roberts Projects

With their muted palettes and enigmatic subject matter, the paintings of Lenz Geerk exude a strong sense of Magrittean disquiet. Like the Belgian master, his work is steeped in art history, and the figures, objects, and places he depicts seem deeply rooted in the world of dreams. In Tie III (2024), a man in a suit stands stiffly against a bare wall, gazing at his tie unfurled on the floor at his feet, while in Man Holding the Night Sky (2024), a figure stands atop a rock, unfurling a black sheet emblazoned with stars. Cryptic and mysterious, Geerk’s work carefully balances what to reveal and what to withhold.

Dominique Fung

B. 1987, Ottawa, Canada. Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Look Steadily and Intently, 2021
Dominique Fung
Woaw

Born in Canada, but with ancestry in Shanghai and Hong Kong, Dominique Fung’s work is inspired by Asian artefacts encountered in museums during her youth. Reimagined through a contemporary lens, she liberates these objects from their colonial or imperialist histories, imbuing them with a new and complex life of their own.

Blending older traditions of European painting—whether Baroque, Rococo, or Renaissance—with a Surrealist streak recalling Magritte and Dorothea Tanning, works such as Stray Hair (2020) and Look Steadily and Intently (2021) have a dreamlike quality that hints at unsettling narratives just beyond our grasp. And, much like Magritte, her works operate on multiple levels. Combining elements of humor and the uncanny, their sensuous and exquisitely painted surfaces conceal more serious undertones lurking beneath.

Joseph Yaeger

B. 1986, Helena, Montana. Lives and works in London.

Joseph Yaeger’s paintings, like Magritte’s, are full of secrets. Opaque, voyeuristic, and enigmatically titled, they are charged with a noirish atmosphere of mystery and uncertainty, occupying an uneasy space somewhere between dreams and cinema stills (on which many of them are based). The faces of his figures are often veiled or obscured—by smoke, shadows, bandages, or another person’s hand—resisting any straightforward emotional or psychological interpretation. In particular, they recall iconic works by Magritte, such as The Lovers (1928) or The Son of Man (1946).

Working in watercolor on gesso, his works combine technical mastery with subtle hints of decay, their scarred and cracked surfaces dusted with studio debris, evoking a pervasive sense of dread or unease that underpins so many aspects of modern existence. New works by Yaeger will go on view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo later this fall.

Isabelle Albuquerque

B. 1981, Los Angeles. Lives and works in Los Angeles.

Call Me, 2024
Isabelle Albuquerque
Newchild Gallery

Just as Magritte would sometimes depict the human form in fragmented, transfigured, or impossible states (as in Le Viol (1934/1945), in which a naked female torso merges with a woman’s face), Isabelle Albuquerque deconstructs the physical form to create formally complex sculptures with strong echoes of the surreal. Exploring women’s experience of desire, sexuality, and violence, she combines traditional techniques with contemporary technologies like 3D scans and lifecasts of her own body to create headless, truncated, or otherwise transmuted figures.

Often merging biological forms with manufactured, mundane, or mythological elements, her sculptures serve as prime examples of the ‘surreal object’, inviting any number of readings and interpretations. In the Gagosian show, her work Summertime Sadness (2024), in which a shock of fire-red human hair sprouts from a bronze cast of a dismembered arm, has definite affinities with Magritte. As Sharp pointed out, it was “the first object she suggested when we approached her for the exhibition.”

Kate Meissner

B. 1995, Sacramento. Lives and works in Los Angeles.

Kate Meissner’s highly saturated, theatrically lit oil paintings present a mysterious shadow world in which familiar scenes are made alluringly strange. The female figures she depicts are elusive, possessed of an eerie, plastic quality somewhere between human and mannequin. Their faces are always obscured, their bodies contorted and partially veiled by fabric, and their limbs either prosthetic or missing altogether.

Often framed in tightly enclosed spaces such as doorways, nightclub booths, or peep-show stages, their compressed, claustrophobic settings evoke a palpable sense of unease while also hinting at unconscious or hidden desires. Blending the surrealism of Magritte with the body horror of filmmaker David Cronenberg, Meissner’s work fearlessly explores the complex emotional and psychological consequences for women of being on display, creating a potent cocktail of apprehension, dread, and curiosity.

Natalia Gonzalez Martin

B. 1995, Madrid. Lives and works in London.

Cascara II , 2024
Natalia Gonzalez Martin
Richard Saltoun

Painted on wood panels using egg tempera and rabbit skin glue, the exquisitely detailed paintings of Natalia Gonzalez Martin hark back to medieval icons, Renaissance altarpieces, and illuminated manuscripts. However, the atmosphere she creates within these confined spaces remains compellingly odd, infused with a healthy dose of Magrittean Surrealism, ambiguity, and eroticism.

Filtered through the lens of her Catholic upbringing, Gonzalez Martin renders everyday objects strange, poetic, or mystical. She often isolates body parts or objects, placing them in flat, shadowless voids, disrupting the viewer’s sense of reality. And, while her paintings sometimes hint at religious ritual and symbolism, their meaning is much more opaque, evoking both past and present, divine and secular, suggesting that there are other ways to exist within the world.

Zhou Song

B. 1982, Jiangxi, China. Lives and works in Beijing.

Wisdom Tree I, 2025
Zhou Song
Maddox Gallery

Holy Light, 2024
Zhou Song
Volery Gallery

A mind-bending mixture of hyperrealism and surreal flights of fancy, Zhou Song’s remarkable oil paintings explore both the anxieties and the sense of possibility engendered by an age of constant technological acceleration. In his work, natural and artificial elements are distorted and reconfigured in uncanny new forms as the world we know unravels before our eyes. In Wisdom Tree I (2025), for instance, pencils coil through trees like branches, while in other works, candles twist together like snakes, and a rabbit balances a tower of hats on its back.

His “New Nature” series (2020–26) is like Magritte reimagined for the post-human age, and borrows freely from the Belgian artist’s iconic repertoire of motifs. Men in suits, apples, bowler hats, and blue skies full of clouds all feature prominently. Indeed, Homeland (2020) is a direct homage to Magritte’s famous painting The Great War (1964).

Kristin Sanders

B. 1989, California. Lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Shell/Tool, 2023
Kristen Sanders
Asya Geisberg Gallery

Hand and Flint, 2023
Kristen Sanders
Moosey

Magritte’s work often explored the gulf between the physical body and the consciousness within it, and the vividly colored paintings of Kristin Sanders operate in a similar psychological space, reframing it for an era in which artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a reality. The world she conjures is one of mystery and uncertainty—a kind of fever dream in which past and future, human and mechanical, have merged, and the viewer is never sure exactly what they are seeing.

A sense of Magrittean surrealism pervades her work. In Stone/Shift (2023), the face of a humanoid robot is obscured by a piece of sheer silk, while in Body Thing (2023) a hand holds a fragment of a human face, its single eye staring helplessly out at the viewer. And A Sense of Reality (2023), in which a piece of flint hovers in mid air against a cloudy sky, makes a direct reference to Magritte’s The Castle of the Pyrenees (1959).

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Louis Vuitton launches Keith Haring handbag collection. https://ift.tt/QPpj2qN

Louis Vuitton has unveiled the eighth chapter of its Artycapucines collection, dedicating 13 new bag designs to the work of Keith Haring. Developed in collaboration with the Keith Haring Foundation, the collection features the late artist’s vibrant visual language—including his signature “Running Heart,” “Radiant Baby,” dancing figures, and exuberant graphic compositions. These motifs are translated into designs using different craft techniques, from traditional leather marquetry to cutting-edge laser printing.

Haring, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1958 and died in 1990, became one of the defining voices of New York’s downtown art scene in the 1980s, creating graphic works that moved fluidly between street art, gallery walls, and broader culture. His work, characterized by bold outlines, rhythmic figures, and a sense of collective joy, is some of the most recognizable in post-war American art. Beyond the art world, Haring’s imagery has retained a broad cultural presence. His figures have appeared on everything from UNIQLO T-shirts to stadium murals, and his work continues to be cited by a generation of artists, designers, and musicians.

The new designs continue the collaboration between the Keith Haring Foundation and the French fashion house. Earlier this year, Louis Vuitton presented clothing printed with Haring’s designs at its womenswear presentation at New York’s Frick Collection.

Highlights of the new 13-piece collection include the Capucines Nano Running Heart, a minaudière, or vanity case, crafted in silver-tone metal and set with more than 12,000 hand-placed rhinestones; and the Capucines MM Genesis, inspired by a Louis Vuitton suitcase hand-customised by Haring in 1984. The Capucines East-West Mini Maze, is brought to life through intricate bead embroidery, and the Capucines BB Figures feature Haring’s dancing figures on pristine white Taurillon leather, his characteristic black outline integrated into the bag’s architecture.

Louis Vuitton’s Artycapucines Collection, which launched in 2019, now comprises more than 50 designs by artists including Takashi Murakami, Tschabalala Self, Urs Fischer, and Park Seo-Bo. All 13 pieces from the Haring edition will be released as limited editions in Louis Vuitton stores worldwide from January 1, 2027.

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Art Basel Miami Beach announces 272 exhibitors for its 2026 edition. https://ift.tt/OFvWQ63

Art Basel Miami Beach has announced 272 exhibitors, from over 40 countries and territories, for its 2026 edition. The fair takes place December 4th through 6th at the Miami Beach Convention Center, with invite-only VIP days on December 2nd and 3rd.

This year, the fair will introduce a substantially reconfigured showfloor, presenting a more focused gallery lineup across roughly 12 percent less floor space and organizing the fair around four hospitality plazas rather than five. The main Galleries sector will feature about 10 percent fewer exhibitors, with blue-chip galleries once grouped now distributed throughout the show.

“The redesign begins with the galleries: how their artists and programs are presented, and how collectors encounter them,” said Bridget Finn, director of Art Basel Miami Beach, in a statement. “Our exhibitors have reinforced the value of a more focused environment, and the smaller footprint is a deliberate choice in service of that. Each presentation will have room to command attention.”

More than 30 galleries are participating in the fair for the first time, most through the project-based sectors Nova, Positions, and Survey. Galleries from Latin America and the Caribbean are represented in depth. Brazil once again forms the show's third-largest national contingent at the fair with galleries including Raquel Arnaud, Simões de Assis, Nara Roesler, and A Gentil Carioca participating. Galleries from Los Angeles and Chicago are also well-represented this year, along with an increased presence of galleries from South Florida.

Zero 10, Art Basel's initiative for art of the digital era, returns with “Generation,” its largest presentation yet, bringing together 19 projects from 22 galleries and platforms. Curated by Karen Archey with Eli Scheinman, the exhibition includes work by artists such as Jon Rafman, Refik Anadol, and Sarah Meyohas. Former Christie’s head of Digital Art Nicole Sales Giles has joined Art Basel as Zero 10’s first global head, tasked with shaping the initiative's evolution as a year-round platform.

Beyond the convention center, the Turrell Art Foundation and Art Basel, supported by Pace Gallery, will unveil a significant new outdoor body of work by James Turrell, free to the public. In Collins Park, Public Art Fund will present “Between Tides,” a participatory exhibition of artist-designed ping-pong tables. The Art Basel Awards also return in partnership with BOSS, with the Gold Awardees to be revealed at the Art Basel Awards Night on Thursday, December 3rd.

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Rare $3 million David Hockney painting of his dog heading to auction at Christie’s London. https://ift.tt/mDOtehB

A rare painting by David Hockney of his beloved dachshund Stanley is heading to auction at Christie’s, where it carries a high estimate of £2.5 million ($3.3 million).

The work, Dog Painting 17 (1995), shows Stanley curled up asleep on a cushion and is one of more than 40 paintings Hockney made in 1994 and 1995 for his “Dog Series,” devoted entirely to his two dachshunds. It is the first painting from the series ever to come to auction. “This is such an exciting painting for us,” said Tessa Lord, Christie’s head of postwar and contemporary art. “The rarity is kind of extraordinary.”

Christie’s believes only six paintings from the series are in private hands, with the rest held by the David Hockney Foundation. The consignor acquired the work after it appeared in a “Dog Series” exhibition at the L.A. Louver gallery in Venice, California, a show that reportedly drew 7,000 visitors in four days. According to Hockney, many brought their own dogs along.

Stanley, named after silent film star Stan Laurel, was chosen as a puppy by Hockney in 1987 and rarely left his side. He later adopted a second dachshund named Boodgie. The dogs became fixtures of Hockney’s famously social Hollywood Hills home, where, according to his authorized biographer Christopher Simon Sykes, the artist was untroubled by their lack of house training. One friend, Jonathon Brown, recalled the dogs relieving themselves in Hockney's shoes, and, on one occasion, on the floor of actor Dennis Hopper’s Frank Gehry–designed house in Venice. Hockney's response, as Brown told it, was characteristically unbothered, “Oh, it'll be dry in the morning, luv, and you can just pick it up.” Hopper, Brown said, “chose silence, but he looked like murder.”

Hockney began painting Stanley and Boodgie at a difficult moment, after losing several friends to AIDS-related illness and, in particular, following the death of his close friend, the curator Henry Geldzahler, from pancreatic cancer. Hockney later said he had wanted “desperately to paint something loving.” Lord described the “Dog” Series” in similar terms, saying “He felt such a loss of love; this was kind of a catharsis for him.”

Of Dog Painting 17 specifically, she pointed to its “incredible spontaneity” and “fluidity of brushstrokes,” noting the texture built up beneath the cushion and “that slight flick of the ear that really animates Stanley.” She added: “I love the fact that there is this kind of innocence to it, but it is so much more than that. There’s a universality to it… It's so much more than just a portrait of a dog.”

Hockney was hardly alone among artists in finding inspiration in a pet dachshund—both Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso doted on the breed. Picasso's dachshund Lump appears in his studies for his painting Las Meninas (1957), and Warhol was frequently photographed with his own. ”

“Dog Painting 17” carries an estimate of £1.5 million to £2.5 million ($1.99 million to $3.3 million) and will be sold on October 14, during Frieze Week in London, following the artist’s death this past June at 88. The painting will go on public view, free of charge, at Christie's London galleries beginning October 8th.

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What Sold at The Armory Show 2026 https://ift.tt/Ux8ET1N

The Armory Show wrapped up its 2026 edition on Sunday, September 27th, following four days at the Javits Center that brought some 50,000 visitors to the fair. This year’s edition arrived later than usual on New York’s art world calendar, shifting from its traditional early September slot to the end of the month, and expanded to 242 exhibitors from more than 30 countries. Under director Kyla McMillan, the fair also grew its Presents and Solo sections, devoted to emerging galleries and single-artist presentations, respectively.

There were several other firsts. The fair debuted Armory After Hours (a carnival-inspired procession through the aisles led by a DJ and live percussionists), and staged its largest prize program to date. That included new acquisition initiatives with Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Bronx Museum, the latter of which acquired Zoë Pulley’s Elegance No. 1 (2026) for $14,000 from Superposition Gallery, one of Artsy’s best booths from the fair.

Elegance No. 1, 2026
Zoë Pulley
Superposition

Spring (81), 2026
Zoë Pulley
Superposition

This year’s edition featured sales across a particularly wide range of price points. The most expensive disclosed transaction was a Jackson Pollock painting sold by Hollis Taggart for between $3 million and $3.5 million, while several galleries reported seven-figure sales by artists including Joan Mitchell, Tracey Emin, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The fair also placed an emphasis on the Caribbean and its diaspora, with booths and large-scale installations addressing migration, memory, and regional identity, including presentations by artists such as Gio Swaby, Kachelle Knowles, Lizania Cruz, Joshua Nazario, and Bony Ramirez.

“The energy at The Armory Show this year was palpable,” McMillan told Artsy. “Collectors, dealers, curators, and visitors alike returned with optimism and excitement for the fall art season. We saw this translate into enthusiastic attendance throughout the fair. From opening day, galleries reported a buoyant energy that led to incredibly productive conversations and sales over the course of the fair.”

Here, we round up sales reported by galleries at the fair.

Top sales at The Armory Show 2026

Untitled, 1951
Jackson Pollock
Hollis Taggart

In addition to the Pollock sale, Hollis Taggart also reported:

• Basquiat’s Untitled (Figure Holding Up Fish) (1981) for $1.4 million–$1.6 million.
• Michael West’s Untitled (1947) for $180,000–$220,000.
• Pablo Atchugarry’s Untitled (2026) for $150,000–$200,000.
• Stuart Davis’s Quinciette (1964) for $120,000–$140,000.
• Karel Appel’s Untitled (1973) for $40,000–$50,000.
• Norman Carton’s Green Landscape for $10,000.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery—another of Artsy’s best booths from the fair—sold a painting by Joan Mitchell for “more than” $2 million to a private collection. Further reported sales included:

• Two works on paper by Benny Andrews for $50,000–$100,000 each.
• A bronze by Richmond Barthé for $100,000–$250,000.
• A collage by Louise Nevelson for $100,000–$250,000.
• A mixed-media collage by Hannelore Baron for $10,000–$25,000.

Almine Rech’s reported sales were led by two Scott Kahn paintings for between $400,000 and $500,000 each. Further sales included:

• Two Larry Poons paintings for $250,000–$400,000.
• A George Condo work on paper for $200,000–$225,000.
• A Tom Wesselmann work on paper for $150,000–$175,000.
• A Joe Andoe painting for $90,000–$110,000.
• A Taryn Simon work for $30,000–$40,000.

Edwynn Houk Gallery sold a László Moholy-Nagy gelatin silver print for $320,000, as well as a Ron Norsworthy print for $9,500.

Robert Mapplethorpe, 1983
Andy Warhol
MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY

Maruani Mercier sold Andy Warhol’s Robert Mapplethorpe (1983) for between $250,000 and $350,000. It also sold Jaclyn Conley’s Drawing in Green (2026) for $30,000–$35,000, Morning Woman (2025) for $8,000–$12,000, and Von Wolfe’s The Dollhouse and the Dusk (2025) for $80,000–$100,000.

Marc Straus reported more than 20 sales, ranging from $8,000 to $250,000, with works acquired by six museums. The gallery sold five chair sculptures by Lucia Hierro for $85,000 each, three of which went to museums.

More key sales from The Armory Show 2026

Almost Grown, 2001
Peter Doig
Galerie Maximillian

Gazelli Art House placed a painting by Lilly Fenichel with a private European museum for “around” $200,000.

Galerie Maximillian sold Rashid Johnson’s Untitled (Large Mosaic) (2025) for “around” $175,000 in the first hour of the fair. It also sold Jonas Wood’s Five Bonsais (2024) for “around” $125,000 and Peter Doig’s Almost Grown (2001) for “around” $45,000.

Nara Roesler sold a Sheila Hicks work for $120,000–$280,000. The gallery also placed Abraham Palatnik’s W-600 (2014) for $60,000, Marco A. Castillo’s Wakamba con facciones cartesianas 2 for $50,000, and two works by Manoela Medeiros for $9,000 and $22,000 each.

Mennour “nearly sold out” its booth, selling eight paintings by Dhewadi Hadjab for $110,000 each.

Miles McEnery Gallery’s sales were led by Inka Essenhigh’s Matisse’s Window (2026) for $110,000–$120,000. Other works included:

• Karin Davie’s Trespasser no. 2 (2025) for $80,000–$90,000.
• Two Jacob Hashimoto works for $75,000–$85,000 each.
• Tom LaDuke’s The River Doesn’t Move Like That (2026) for $55,000–$65,000.
• James Siena’s Hayes Pond (2026) for $35,000–$45,000.
• Raffi Kalenderian’s Christine Reading (2025) for $14,000–$24,000.

Matisse's Window, 2026
Inka Essenhigh
Miles McEnery Gallery

Trespasser no. 2, 2025
Karin Davie
Miles McEnery Gallery

Ludorff sold Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure: Small Head (1980) for €100,000 ($113,890), alongside two Josef Albers screenprints for $11,000 and $13,000, an Imi Knoebel for $22,000, a Katharina Fritsch resin work for $17,000, and a Frank Stella lithograph for $12,000.

Galerie Forsblom sold Hashimoto’s Ignition (2026) for $65,000, as well as three works by Iria Leino, two for $55,000, and the third for $62,000. Works by Rauha Mäkilä and Susanne Gottberg sold for $10,000 and $11,500, respectively.

Southern Guild sold an undisclosed number of works, including one by Roméo Mivekannin for $56,000 and another by Zanele Muholi for $52,000. It also sold a work by Amine El Gotaibi for $34,000, and one by Adebayo Bolaji for $28,000.

Aki Gallery reported approximately $210,000 in total sales from its presentation of works by Yang-Tsung Fan, Yih-Han Wu, Wei Lu, Willy Verginer, and Tsuchiya Yoshimasa.

Untitled, 2026
Pieter Vermeersch
P420

Ignition, 2026
Jacob Hashimoto
Galerie Forsblom

P420—another of Artsy’s best booths—led sales with Irma Blank’s Abecedarium, 7-2-91 (1991) for $160,000. The gallery also sold:

• Blank’s Gehen, Second life C-2, aprile 2018 (2018) for $12,000.
• Three Adelaide Cioni works for $5,000 each.
• Pieter Vermeersch’s Untitled (2026) for $35,000.
• Shafei Xia’s A toast to the past (2026) for $7,000.
• Xian Kim’s Object 401 (2026) for $15,000.

Other notable sales from The Armory Show 2026

Galerie Thomas Fuchs reported more than 30 sales, including three paintings by Rainer Fetting for $67,000–$85,000 each, five paintings by Yongchul Kim for $5,400–$21,600 each, 11 works by Carlo Krone for $1,700–$9,200 each, and 16 works by Logan T. Sibrel for $3,300–$16,500 each.

Rukaj sold paintings by Lester Johnson for $95,000, Roy Kiyooka for $65,000, Friedel Dzubas for $27,000, and William Perehudoff for $25,000.

Everard Read sold a Caryn Scrimgeour painting for $68,000, a work by Gerhard Marx for $30,000, and a Mary Sibande sculpture for $12,000.

Anat Ebgi sold Marisa Adesman’s Tug of War (2025) for $60,000 and Stargazer (2026) for $50,000, alongside three Marc Dennis paintings for $20,000, $28,000, and $55,000. It also sold two Tammi Campbell works for $25,000 each, an Erin Wright painting for $18,000, six Olive Diamond ceramics for $9,000–$18,000 each, and additional works by Anabel Juárez, Simon Haas, Ileana Garcia Magoda, and Veronica Fernandez for $4,500–$9,000 each.

Alzueta Gallery sold nine Maria Yelletisch paintings for $5,000–$15,000 each, five Claudia Valsells paintings for $2,500–$15,000 each, two Jordi Alcaraz resin works for $25,000–$30,000 each, and a Guim Tió Zarraluki painting for $35,000–$40,000.

Alisan Fine Arts sold works by Yang Yong Liang and Wesley Tongson for $25,000–$30,000 each, as well as two Li Hong Wei works for $16,000–$20,000 each.

Spinello Projects sold 13 works by Elliot & Erick Jiménez for prices ranging from “below” $10,000 to $20,000 each, in addition to an institutional placement in New York for $30,000–$50,000.

Suppoment Gallery sold six Hye Jo Kwon works for $3,000–$5,000 each, a Kong Mi Sook painting for $15,000, four Yoo Mi Seon works for $5,000–$15,000 each, and an Inseob Lee work for $7,000–$9,000.

EDJI Gallery placed the majority of the works it presented by Killion Huang, priced from $1,200 to $10,000.

As well as Zoë Pulley’s Elegance No. 1 (2026), Superposition sold Pulley’s Sandra (81) and Solid Winter (81) for $6,000 each.

Victoria Miro sold 18 works priced between $20,000 and $70,000 each by artists including Clare Woods, Tal R, Celia Paul, and Doron Langberg.

TERN Gallery sold three Gio Swaby works for $18,500–$65,000 each, alongside four Kachelle Knowles works for “around” $5,000 each. JO-HS sold three Morten Slettemeås paintings for “around” $20,000 each.

De Buck sold “multiple” large-scale paintings by Gommaar Gilliams in the $20,000–$30,000 range, along with works by Devan Shimoyama for $20,000–$60,000 and a Shirley Yang Crutchfield work for $10,000–$20,000.

Additional sales at The Armory Show 2026

Other sales reported by galleries at the fair included:

• Harper’s sold Marc Dennis’s Dragonslayer (2026) for $75,000.
• Perrotin sold six works by Kathia St. Hilaire for between $5,000 and $45,000 apiece.
• Vielmetter Los Angeles reported 10 sales ranging from $2,500 to $48,000.
• Gallery Dasun sold Choi Young Wook’s Karma (2026) for $46,000.
• K Contemporary sold four Diego Rodriguez-Warner paintings for $18,000–$75,000 apiece.
• Newchild Gallery sold out its booth of Andrew Sendor works, priced between $17,500 and $85,000.
• Fridman Gallery sold two new Nate Lewis works for $20,000–$40,000 each, a Remy Jungerman panel for $37,000, and three Laurena Fineus works for $6,000–$16,000 each.

The Chattering, 2026
Diego Rodriguez-Warner
K Contemporary

Dolores in Silk Under Slow Trees, 2026
Diego Rodriguez-Warner
K Contemporary

• Catharine Clark Gallery sold eight works from its Katherine Vetne solo presentation for between $1,500 and $20,000.
• Tanya Weddemire Gallery sold seven paintings by Austin Uzor and O’Neil Scott for between $8,000 and $14,000 each.
• EBONY/CURATED placed six ceramic vessels by Lisa Ringwood for $6,000–$9,000 each.
• Mindy Solomon Gallery placed nine Yanira Collado works for $2,000–$20,000 each.
• re.riddle sold five Summer Mei Ling Lee works for $5,000, $5,500, $7,500, $10,000, and $11,300 each.

Self Potrait: K.A- 18.07.26, 1-3, 2026
Kesewa Aboah
Hannah Traore

Forget Me Not, Series, 2, 2026
Kesewa Aboah
Hannah Traore

• Hannah Traore sold out its entire booth, where works were priced between $2,500 and $27,000.
• Yiwei Gallery placed six works for $7,000–$16,000 each.
• Pangée sold the “majority” of its booth, with works priced between $5,000 and $16,000.
• Andrew Reed Gallery sold three Gonçalo Preto paintings for $4,500–$6,000 each.

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The 10 Best Booths at The Armory Show 2026 https://ift.tt/T4nYZFN

The Armory Show returned to the Javits Center, opening its VIP day on Thursday, September 24th. The 2026 edition landed later on the calendar than usual, pushed from its traditional early September slot to later in the month, running through Sunday, September 27th. There was a noted sense of anticipation in the air on the morning of the VIP day, and collectors met the fair with enthusiasm and energy.

Under fair director Kyla McMillan, this year’s edition has grown to 242 exhibitors from more than 30 countries, with expanded Presents and Solo sections dedicated to emerging galleries and solo artist presentations, respectively. A Caribbean thread ran through both the Focus section, curated by María Elena Ortiz, and the Platform section for large-scale artworks, curated by Jovanna Venegas.

A particular crowd-pleaser was Bony Ramírez’s mixed-media assemblage installation La Carta (2026) featuring a doll girl resting on a four-poster bed. Presented by regular norma as part of Platform, La Carta is a consideration of how we meet bad news and will change its configuration every day of the fair. Nearby, El Museo del Barrio staged another highlight, a participatory textile installation by Lulu Varona for the fair’s Spotlight program.

Several new developments accompany this year’s fair. On Friday, the fair will kick off its inaugural Armory After Hours, hosting a carnival-inspired procession, led by a DJ and live percussionists, through the aisles. This year also marked the biggest slate of prizes in The Armory Show’s history, including a new three-way Pérez Art Museum Miami Acquisition Prize and an inaugural Bronx Museum Acquisition Prize, awarded to Zoë Pulley for a work in Superposition’s booth.

Major collectors came out for opening day, including Beth DeWoody, Pamela Joyner, Jason and Michelle Rubell, and Susan and Michael Hort, along with curators Scott Rothkopf and Klaus Biesenbach, among others. Celebrities spotted among the booths included Jodie Foster, Paul Rudd, and Karl-Anthony Towns. Sales reported by galleries on the day were led by a Joan Mitchell painting for over $2 million at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

But among the fanfare, the real action really took place within the booths. Here are Artsy’s picks for the 10 best booths from The Armory Show 2026.

Spinello Projects

Booth F1

With works by Elliot & Erick Jiménez

Identical twins Elliot & Erick Jiménez transformed Miami gallery Spinello Projects’ booth into a meditation on transformation with “What We Are Becoming,” their first major body of work since their debut solo museum show in 2025, “El Monte” at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Raised in an Afro Cuban household in the U.S., the Miami-based artists debuted photographic works in reliquary-like frames, while the booth’s walls were draped in floor-length deep green drapes. In the booth’s title piece, What We Are Becoming (2026), an archival pigment print shows a shadowy figure with eyes glancing out mournfully. The image is studded with custom silk organza butterflies. Another work, Babalú-Ayé (2026), honors the orisha of healing and disease through a canvas print embedded with found antique metal ex-votos.

Of the works on view, 7 sold within the fair’s first days, each priced between $10,000 and $20,000.

Superposition

Booth P10

With works by Zoë Pulley

Elegance No. 1, 2026
Zoë Pulley
Superposition

For her first-ever fair presentation and first New York gallery show, Brooklyn-based Zoë Pulley built her installation, collectively titled “A Conversation Had on February 27th,” around the archive of her grandmother, Sandra Olivia Moon Hightower. A self-taught fashion designer who staged independent runway shows in early 1980s Philadelphia, Hightower worked entirely outside the industry’s institutional record.

At the nomadic gallery Superposition’s booth, Pulley’s works function as reconstructed garments and alternative archives, incorporating image transfer, collage, and press clippings alongside her own handwritten notes. The presentation is anchored by A Conversation Had on February 27th (Tetraptych) (2026), four lit panels on milk crates, each bearing a line in Hightower’s own words: “I just wanted to put people on the runway who never got the opportunity to be on the runway.”

Another work, Elegance No. 1 (2026), won the fair’s inaugural Bronx Museum Acquisition Prize and sold for $14,000. Other works in the 23-piece booth ranged from $3,500 to $7,500. Including personal family ephemera and adaptations of Hightower’s now-vintage garments, this installation is poignant and playful at once.

Perrotin

Booth 100

With works by Kathia St. Hilaire

Artist Kathia St. Hilaire’s richly textured reduction-relief paintings offer a sumptuous start to the fair in a dedicated booth at Perrotin, located right at the fair’s entrance.

St. Hilaire builds her surfaces by carving and printing linoleum blocks onto collaged panels. She then sands away layers, incorporating shredded tires, banknotes, sugarcane bagasse, and even skin-lightening cream packaging alongside more traditional paint.

One work, Saintilus Bois Caïman (2025), depicts the artist as a child witnessing the Haitian artist Jean-Claude Saintilus retell the legend of the 1791 Bois-Caïman ceremony, framed by two caimans (an alligator-like reptile) and vegetation drawn from the artist’s Florida childhood. The gallery reported six works sold on opening day, ranging in price from $5,000 to $45,000.

Carvalho

Booth 133

With works by Élise Peroi, Rosalind Tallmadge, and Anoushka Mirchandani

Brooklyn gallery Carvalho’s booth offered a serene oasis amid the hubbub of the fair, with works by artists Élise Peroi, Rosalind Tallmadge, and Anoushka Mirchandani, offering a masterclass in material sensitivity.

Newly represented artist Peroi, an alum of The Artsy Vanguard 2026, reconfigures gouache-on-silk landscapes by cutting them into ribbons and reweaving them on a tapestry loom. Her Reflet bleu (2026), a translucent panel of silk, gouache, linen, and maple, sold during the fair’s opening hours. Meanwhile, Tallmadge’s Palingenesis (2026) layers mirrored mica over hand-painted silk in a large-scale panel that functions as much as sculpture as painting. Making her debut with the gallery, Mirchandani contributed multivalent, ethereal oil, oil stick, and oil pastel figurative paintings.

JO-HS

Booth P46

With works by Morten Slettemeås

Norwegian painter Morten Slettemeås filled New York gallery JO-HS’s booth with “VEKE” (all works 2026), seven large oil-on-canvas panels—each roughly 79 by 59 inches—drawn from the landscape of Gvarv, Telemark, where the artist grew up.

The title, meaning “week” in Norwegian, nods to the seven panels and the seven days it references, while a recurring horizontal line, evoking a candle’s wick, threads through the compositions as both a visual and temporal device.

Slettemeås moves fluidly between figuration and abstraction, compressing memory, place, and perception into single images where distinct moments seem to coexist. The gallery conceived the booth as an architectural, immersive environment rather than a conventional display. The seven panels were offered at a price on request.

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery

Booth 407

With works by Benny Andrews, Milton Avery, Hannelore Baron, Richmond Barthé, Mary Bauermeister, William Baziotes, Romare Bearden, Paul Cadmus, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Harold Cousins, Jay DeFeo, Beauford Delaney, Melvin Edwards, Claire Falkenstein, Jared French, Sam Gilliam, Nancy Grossman, William H. Johnson, Lee Krasner, Yayoi Kusama, Hughie Lee-Smith, Norman Lewis, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Alfonso Ossorio, Irene Rice Pereira, Jackson Pollock, Fairfield Porter, Betye Saar, Esphyr Slobodkina, Alma Thomas, Bob Thompson, George Tooker, Charmion von Wiegand, Charles White, Jack Whitten, and William T. Williams

While many booths at this year’s fair leaned into single-artist narratives, New York’s Michael Rosenfeld Gallery went the opposite direction, filling its booth with 112 works spanning more than three decades of American art history. The New York gallery’s presentation ranged across works by Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Yayoi Kusama, Romare Bearden, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Alma Thomas, and Jack Whitten, among dozens of others. A Joan Mitchell painting from the presentation sold for more than $2 million, the most expensive sale reported at the fair from its VIP day.

One particularly powerful segment of the booth was devoted to assemblage works, including works by late American artist Betye Saar, box assemblages by Holocaust survivor Hannelore Baron, and Barbara Chase-Riboud’s evocative Poet’s Letter on the Shoulder of His Mistress (1994).

Lyndsey Ingram

Booth 138

With works by Stephen Chambers, Kate Friend, Florence Houston, Fumi Imamura, Suzy Murphy, Heidrun Rathgeb, Liselotte Watkins, and Anne-Laure Zevi

London gallery Lyndsey Ingram brought eight artists together around themes of the natural world, identity, and small moments of daily beauty.

Artist Fumi Imamura makes her New York debut with large-scale floral collage and watercolor works, their intricate paper gardens rendered in rich earth tones. Kate Friend released new photographic outtakes from her “As Chosen By…” portrait series alongside a large-scale image from “There Are Always Flowers for Those That Want to See Them,” a series shot at Vatican-approved Marian apparition sites.

Florence Houston’s hyper-detailed paintings of an ornate Victorian jelly, a bar of soap, and a light switch imbued the everyday with unexpected sensuality, while Liselotte Watkins contributed six aerial-perspective compositions balancing decorative beauty with conceptual tension.

Hannah Traore

Booth P20

With works by Kesewa Aboah

New York gallery Hannah Traore gave over its booth to Ghanaian British artist Kesewa Aboah, who uses her own body as a printmaking tool. Aboah presses her fingerprints and limbs into magnesium plates originally designed for 20th-century letterpress printing, then frames the cold metal in warm, grained tulipwood, turning a commercial reproduction tool into a singular record of her body.

The presentation’s most ambitious work, Self Portrait: KA-18.07.26, 1-3 (2026), consists of 15 magnesium plates stamped over and over with her limbs, left deliberately unpolished so the reactive metal could tarnish unpredictably, “like a person,” as the artist put it. The booth sold out entirely within the fair’s opening hours, with works priced between $2,500 and $27,000.

P420

Booth 120

With works by Irma Blank, Adelaide Cioni, Victor Fotso Nyie, Xian Kim, Shafei Xia, Pieter Vermeersch, Riccardo Baruzzi, and Laura Grisi

P420, from Bologna, Italy, mixed generations and media across eight artists. These included works by the late Irma Blank, whose Radical Writings, Abecedarium, 7-2-91, 1991 (1991) trace the rhythm of her own breath across paper and canvas in a private, wordless script, alongside Untitled (1965–66) by Laura Grisi, an Italian pioneer whose 1960s abstractions bridged Pop, Conceptual, and kinetic art.

But the real draw of the booth is the delightful creations of rising contemporary artist Shafei Xia. Born in Shaoxing, China, and now based in Bologna, Xia paints and sculpts, creating playful works that take inspiration from Japanese shunga woodblock prints and 19th-century Chinese erotic painting.

In these works, Xia often casts herself as a tiger, a symbol of instinctual power in Chinese alchemy. Among the works on view were Summer time (2026), a large watercolor on sandalwood paper mounted on canvas, and Little girl (2026), a painted and glazed ceramic sculpture of a girl holding a tiger in her arms like a lap cat.

EBONY/CURATED

Booth 309

With works by Hugh Byrne, Wole Lagunju, Kimathi Mafafo, Senzeni Mtwakazi Marasela, and Lisa Ringwood

Cape Town and Franschhoek, South Africa, gallery EBONY/CURATED made its Armory debut with a five-artist presentation spanning painting, textile, and ceramic work from across the African continent.

Wole Lagunju’s Homage to Eshumare (2026), a large oil painting steeped in Yoruba iconography, anchored the booth and was offered at $38,500. Kimathi Mafafo’s hand- and machine-stitched embroideries drew attention, as did Senzeni Mtwakazi Marasela’s red-thread-on-cotton Waiting for Gebane 1 (year), part of an ongoing series that follows a fictional alter ego through South African history. Lisa Ringwood’s hand-built, delicate, sgraffito-decorated ceramic vessels, meanwhile, were the breakout of the booth. Six of her works sold within the fair’s opening hours, priced between $6,000 and $9,000 each.

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