“Rodney Graham”
Where: 303 Gallery, 555 W 21st Street
When: September 3–October 24
Why It’s Worth a Look: The gallery’s first exhibition of Rodney Graham’s work since his death in 2022 will offer a crash course in the Canadian artist’s intricate fictions. On view are lightboxes that capture the artist in elaborately composed scenes; in one, he is a professor mid-lecture, perching on the side of a desk with a cigarette between two fingers. Visitors will also encounter selections from entire bodies of work Graham created while in character.
Know Before You Go: New York is experiencing a Canadian invasion this fall. In addition to Graham, two other members of the so-called Vancouver School—known for their engagement with the theatricality and mutability of lens-based media—will be the subject of exhibitions: Stan Douglas opens at David Zwirner on Sept. 12 and Jeff Wall lands at Gagosian in November.
“Room, Sea, and Sky” by Philip Guston
Where: Hauser and Wirth, 443 W 18th Street
When: September 3–October 26
Why It’s Worth a Look: Printmaking is often relegated to ugly stepsister status in the art world, but it can be as fruitful an outlet for creative expression as painting and sculpture. This show explores American artist Philip Guston’s often-overlooked printmaking practice.
Know Before You Go: Guston delved deeply into printmaking after 1979, when a heart attack limited his ability to produce large-scale paintings. He developed a close collaboration with famed printshop Gemini GEL and its director Sidney Felsen, who died earlier this year.
“DEEP PHOTOS / IN THE BEGINNING” by Laurie Simmons
Where: 56 Henry, 105 Henry Street
When: September 4–October 27
Why It’s Worth a Look: This showing of new work by Laurie Simmons, the artist’s second presentation at dynamo dealer Ellie Rines’s pint-size gallery, promises confection and greasy American fare. That much was revealed in the gallery’s cryptic Instagram post: “🍔🌭🥣🍕." The focus aligns with Simmons’s career-spanning interest in using toys and other emblems of childhood and consumerism to skewer American culture.
Know Before You Go: Last year, Simmons told CULTURED of her practice: “I don’t have a narrative in my work, but the story I tell myself about my work is that I look for moments when the experiences I’ve had in my life come up against something that’s happening at a specific time in our culture. I try to pinpoint that.”
“Warm Rhythm” by Hilary Pecis
Where: David Kordansky Gallery, 520 W 20th Street
When: September 4–October 12
Why It’s Worth a Look: While fans of Hilary Pecis’s work may be familiar with her urban landscapes, the artist here turns her gaze toward the domestic. Pulling from the Pattern and Decoration movement of 1970s New York, the West Coast artist highlights the adornment of our most personal and communal spaces.
Know Before You Go: Pecis’s expressive pieces are painted without preliminary sketches; she mixes paints as needed, references images from her phone, and often bounces between multiple works in various states of completion. The result is a series that feels unusually cohesive—a proposition started in one painting may be resolved in the next.
“A Spell of Good Things” by Ibrahim Mahama
Where: White Cube, 1002 Madison Avenue
When: September 5–October 26
Why It’s Worth a Look: Continuing his investigation into political and economic realities of labor, Ibrahim Mahama here narrows in on the colonial-era railways of Ghana. The artist first found success with public installations across the country’s cities of Accra and Kumasi, where he lives and works. In this exhibition, the work’s scale is downsized, taking the form of a gallery installation and series of charcoal drawings. Industrial materials salvaged from local laborers serve as the starting point for Mahama’s creations.
Know Before You Go: Recent years have seen Mahama focus his efforts on building out Ghana’s art infrastructure. In 2019, the artist founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art alongside its sister institution and Mahama’s studio, Red Clay.
“Social Media” by Josh Kline
Where: Lisson, 508 W 24th Street
When: September 5–October 19
Why It’s Worth a Look: Josh Kline made his name with incisive sculptures and installations that poetically and humorously lay bare the consequences of capitalism and the dehumanizing nature of American labor. His latest body of work—and his debut exhibition with Lisson after joining the gallery’s roster in May—will focus on the commodification of the self through social media. For the first time, Kline will turn his 3-D scanner on himself and present a series of partial self-portraits.
Know Before You Go: The New York-based artist has been on a tear over the last year, with a celebrated mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York that closed last August and an immersive installation about the climate crisis on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (through Jan. 5).
“Suzanne Jackson”
Where: Ortuzar Projects, 5 White Street
When: September 12–October 19
Why It’s Worth a Look: The octogenarian artist Suzanne Jackson was one of the brightest stars of this year’s Whitney Biennial. This show will offer new fans a deeper look at her four-decade-long love affair with paper, bringing together early drawings, mid-2000s sculptural works, and recent “environmental abstractions,” which suspend shredded mail and other papers in acrylic paint. Often presented hanging from the ceiling, they look like a cross between a melted painting and a sculptural curtain—and they are unforgettable.
Know Before You Go: In addition to her work as an artist, Jackson was also an influential art dealer: from 1969 to 1970, she ran Gallery 32 in Los Angeles. With a short lifespan and a long tail, the loft gallery space showed the work of now-famous peers including David Hammons, Betye Saar, and Senga Nengudi.
“Polyurethane Objects” by Peter Fischli & David Weiss
Where: Matthew Marks, 522 West 22nd Street
When: September 12–October 26
Why It’s Worth a Look: This is the largest presentation of the witty, playful Swiss duo’s work in New York since their 2016 retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. It presents a rollocking installation of more than 400 quotidian objects that one might find in an artist’s studio, from paint cans to crates. There’s even a mini-fridge.
Know Before You Go: Although Weiss (who died in 2012) and Fischli are best known for their cunning conceptual sleight-of-hand, the work in this show—made between 1993 and 2014—came out of their desire to return to hands-on making. They carved and hand-painted each item in the installation.
“Nan Goldin”
Where: Gagosian, 522 West 21st Street
When: September 12–October 19
Why It’s Worth a Look: Since Gagosian wooed the celebrated photographer away from Marian Goodman last spring, she’s been on a world tour. In the space of just one year, Gagosian has mounted shows of Goldin’s work in Basel and London, as well as screening a three-channel film, Sisters, Saints, Sibyls, inside a former Welsh chapel. One can only imagine, then, what she has in store for her hometown debut with her new gallery.
Know Before You Go: Goldin was the subject of the Laura Poitras-directed, Oscar-nominated documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which chronicled her fight against the Sackler family. Since then, the Jewish artist has been one of the contemporary art world’s most outspoken advocates for Palestine. It remains to be seen whether her political activism will translate onto gallery walls this fall.
“Subtitled” by Christian Marclay
Where: Paula Cooper, 534 W 21st Street
When: September 12–October 19
Why It’s Worth a Look: File this show under “art you can bring relatives from out of town to see and they won’t be annoyed or bored.” It marks the U.S. premiere of Subtitled, 2019, a video collage of 22 cinematic fragments containing extracts of closed captions stacked vertically on a 20-foot-high screen. The work debuted at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Know Before You Go: The video artwork that made Marclay a star, The Clock, 2010, will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art in November. An even bigger crowd-pleaser than Subtitled, it is a 24-hour compilation of film clips that—in the foreground or somewhere in the background—contain a clock, stitched together to continually reflect the real time of day.
“No straight lines” by Jon Serl
Where: David Zwirner, 34 East 69th Street
When: September 19–October 26
Why It’s Worth a Look: Raised in a vaudeville family, the self-taught artist John Serl eventually put down roots in Lake Elsinore, California, where he produced imaginative compositions in relative obscurity until his death in 1993. The fascinating figure is poised to be a major discovery for many this fall.
Know Before You Go: You know an artist is worth a closer look if fellow artists are the ones advocating for him. Organized in collaboration with the artist Sam Messer, this show includes work by a range of contemporary figures—Katherine Bradford, Louis Fratino, Andy Robert, Dana Schutz, and Josh Smith among them—who have been inspired by Serl.
“Out of Country” by Mark Grotjahn
Where: Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue
When: September 10–October 19
Why It’s Worth a Look: Where the rigidity of geometry meets the explosive energy of abstraction, Mark Grotjahn’s work finds its niche. Over a career of more than three decades, the California-born and -based artist has worked across painting, sculpture, and works on paper. He burst onto the scene in 1993 with his “Sign Exchange” series, in which he offered local shop owners hand-painted replicas of their signage. Grotjahn’s fascination with representation and repetition has continued into mask-making and long-running series of gridded paintings.
Know Before You Go: This latest collection of work has thus far been kept under wraps, but it marks Grotjahn’s 25th presentation with his long-term gallery Gagosian.
