Earlier this month, Artsy launched the eighth edition of The Artsy Vanguard, which features 10 of the most promising artists working today.
Since its debut in 2018, The Artsy Vanguard has shined a light on prodigious creative talent, and many of its alumni have gone on to become leaders in contemporary art and culture. Indeed, 2025 has been a big year for several artists featured in past editions.
Here, we highlight the trajectories of three Vanguard alumni who had major moments in 2025, tracing how their careers have gained momentum since they were featured.
Sasha Gordon
B. 1998, Somers, New York. Lives and works in New York.
The Artsy Vanguard 2022
“Weird” was the word used to describe Sasha Gordon’s work when she was introduced as part of The Artsy Vanguard 2022. In her profile of the artist, writer Claire Voon spoke of how Gordon’s electric-colored, hyperreal paintings “embrace the uncanny through self-portraiture only to assert the very real feeling of navigating layered selves. They explore the full range of her personhood as a biracial queer woman, using devices such as color, scale, and doubling to define herself while pushing against real-world limits.”
That weirdness has resonated in the years since. Today, Gordon is recognized as a leading name in a wider wave of young figurative painters using portraiture to work through the murky politics of identity and the body.
In 2023, she had her first solo museum show, “Sasha Gordon: Surrogate Self,” at the ICA Miami, timed to open during the city’s major December art world moment. Less than a year later, a 26-year-old Gordon became the youngest artist to join the roster of mega-gallery David Zwirner (she is co-represented by Matthew Brown). Shortly thereafter, intense collector demand for her work was crystallized by a splashy auction debut: Gone Fishing (2019) sold for $214,200—114 percent above its mid-estimate—at Christie’s New York.
Her first solo show with Zwirner, “Haze,” opened in New York at the end of September and was one of the buzziest exhibitions of the fall season. Even New York Magazine critic Jerry Saltz was struck: “When she hits, she hits hard,” he wrote. “She paints to free herself from fetishization and the suffocating standards of beauty.”
Michaela Yearwood-Dan
B. 1994, London. Lives and works in London.
The Artsy Vanguard 2022
Another alumna of The Artsy Vanguard 2022, British painter Michaela Yearwood-Dan was spotlighted for her “unabashedly lush and tactile works—manifestations of the themes of love, vulnerability, and femmeness that inspired them,” as Allysia Alleyne wrote in her profile of the artist.
Over the past three years, Yearwood-Dan’s calligraphic abstractions filled with floral motifs and diaristic text have become wildly popular. Her instantly recognizable style, blue-chip representation, and strong market momentum position her among the most prominent abstract painters of her generation.
Yearwood-Dan’s works have been consistently coveted at auction. A month before she was featured in The Artsy Vanguard, her painting Coping Mechanisms (2021) sold at Phillips London for £239,400 ($270,600), nearly 12 times more than its lower estimate and a record for the artist. Just six months later, that total was exceeded when Love me nots (2021) sold for a staggering £730,800 ($881,519) at Christie’s London.
In September 2024, Yearwood-Dan joined the roster of Hauser & Wirth, which represents her in collaboration with Marianne Boesky Gallery. She completed a residency at Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset, England, studio that fall, and in May 2025, she mounted her first solo exhibition with the mega-gallery, “No Time For Despair,” in London. That show was a huge milestone for the artist, the latest highlight in her rapid and ongoing rise. “I feel very fortunate that the equation of hard work and success has worked in my favor,” she told The Artsy Podcast in July.
Another major moment is forthcoming for Yearwood-Dan. In April 2026, she will open her first institutional solo exhibition at The Whitworth in Manchester, England, featuring a new commission.
Xin Liu
B. 1991, Xinjian, China. Lives and works in London.
The Artsy Vanguard 2025
The most recent alumna of this trio, Xin Liu, was featured in last year’s edition of The Artsy Vanguard. Her work—which spans painting, installation, video, and sculpture—often “considers the body and identity through the lens of technology,” as Artsy editor Josie Thaddeus-Johns wrote in her profile of the artist.
“Her work is ambitious and cross-disciplinary, involving experiments with technologies from space travel to DNA sequencing,” Thaddeus-Johns wrote. “For Liu, the scientific experiments in her artworks aren’t a way to distance herself from Earth and humanity, but rather to come closer to others.”
The year since her inclusion in The Artsy Vanguard has been crowned by several standout moments for the Chinese artist. In February, she was the subject of a solo booth at Frieze Los Angeles with local gallery Make Room. The buzzy presentation—which drew curious crowds of visitors to the booth during the fair’s VIP day—centered on a triptych featuring a bronze cast of her mouth.
Liu’s momentum has continued into the fall season. In September, she was a recipient of a prestigious Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award, which recognizes sculptors in the U.K. Last month, she was the subject of another much-talked-about solo booth, this time at Frieze London with Public Gallery. Here, she presented another ambitious installation, anchored by Insomnia (2025), a water tank in which organic duckweed, wax, and threads coexist uneasily with synthetic LEDs and silicone in a laboratory-like environment. The mesmerizing work was a common fixture on social media throughout the fair.
Demand for the artist’s works has also surged on Artsy. Inquiries—messages from potential buyers on Artsy about works they’re interested in purchasing—surged by 325 percent year over year since she was featured in the Vanguard.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/267Y4Ou
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