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"Other Side of the River" by Jay Carrier
When: January 9 - February 15, 2025
Where: 47 Canal
Why It's Worth A Look: Across a plethora of abstract canvases, Jay Carrier extolls the natural beauty of his hometown: Niagara Falls. His first New York solo since 2006, the exhibition features paintings created from the mid-2000s onwards, highlighting the artist's longstanding fascination with the area.
Know Before You Go: The show's title refers to Niagara Falls itself, which divides the U.S. from Canada, and which Carrier himself crossed with his family in early childhood after being born on the Six Nations on the Grand River reserve up North.
"Salt in the throat" by Emil Sands
When: January 9 - February 15, 2025
Where: Kasmin
Why It's Worth A Look: Is it portraiture or landscape? Emil Sands doesn't quite want you to know. Across seascapes and forests, Sands's characters explore their natural environments with care, the same kind the artist affords the landscapes with his paintbrush. Standing in contrapposto-like poses or dipping into the water, the figures invite your gaze throughout Kasmin's white cube.
Know Before You Go: The exhibition title is inspired by Sylvia Plath's poem "Berck-Plage,” 1962, an exploration of human life and uncanny use of metaphor.
“Plastered” by Nicole Eisenman
When: January 22 - March 6, 2025
Where: Anton Kern Gallery
Why it is Worth A Look: Known for both expressive paintings and powerful sculptures, this exhibition features 10 relief portraits and two large-scale wall reliefs, a classical sculptural technique that dates back 20,000 years in which figures emerge from a flat surface.
Know Before You Go: Nicole Eisenman's work is also on view in Madison Square Park. Our critic Johanna Fateman wrote that the large-scale sculptural piece "echoed the tragicomic allegories and collisions of style often found in Eisenman’s canvases."
“The Medallion” by Kenneth Tam
When: January 17 - March 8, 2025
Where: Bridget Donahue
Why it is Worth A Look: Kenneth Tam's work frequently explores identity and masculinity, intersected with issues surrounding race and labor. While recent projects have tackled Asian fraternities and American cowboy mythology, Tam here looks to the recent crisis New York cab drivers face trying to secure a medallion from the city that would allow them to work.
Know Before You Go: The exhibit includes a two-channel video installation, merging underwater imagery with the iconic symbol of an American car; a new floor-based installation; and several sculptures.
“Room Service” by Al Freeman
When: January 2 - February 1, 2025
Where: Broadway Gallery
Why it is Worth A Look: Al Freeman’s work is regularly riddled with everyday objects like pizza boxes, toothpaste, and cigarettes. At this show, the artist offers beds strewn with items like coins, newspapers, a TV remote, spent solo cups, and drained bottles of Jaegermeister.
Know Before You Go: The exhibition takes inspiration from the 1916 poem "Domination of Black" by Wallace Stevens, a horror-infused recollection by a narrator fearful of what roams outside his windows at night.
"41 Floors" by Cheyenne Julien
When: January 10 - February 15, 2025
Where: Chapter NY
Why it is Worth A Look: Coinciding with "Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph" on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March, Cheyenne Julien's show at Chapter NY explores the outdoor spaces in and around the Tracey Towers, which were designed by Rudolph, a 20th-century experimental architect.
Know Before You Go: Julien actually lived in the Bronx's Tracey Towers as a child, the only subsidized housing that Rudolph ever designed. The artist incorporates her own lived experience into Rudolph's initial designs for community spaces, many of which were never realized in the final construction, a two-fold look at how infrastructure can dictate class and racial perceptions.
"There is another sky" by Katie Paterson
When: January 10 - February 22, 2025
Where: James Cohan
Why it is Worth A Look: Spanning paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, Katie Paterson's exhibition showcases her work delving into humanity's impact on the Earth, often rendered through collaborations with scientists and researchers across the globe.
Know Before You Go: Paterson’s work in the exhibition isn’t just about the natural world, the natural world is incorporated within it: ice core water becomes marbled watercolors, lacquer incorporates ashes from trees, and embroidery revives extinct flowers.
"Everything She Touches Turns to Gold" by Colette Lumiere
When: Opening January 16, 2025
Where: Company Gallery
Why it is Worth A Look: Over five decades, Colette Lumiere has challenged the traditionally masculine canon of art history with her relentlessly hyper-feminine works. The show pulls from various points in her career, including her "LP Covers and Postcards" series, her "Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes" era, and works from when she formed a visual art band in Berlin.
Know Before You Go: Throughout her career, Colette has embodied various artistic personas, from Olympia and Justine to Mata Hari, Countess Reichenbach, the Beautiful Dreamer, and Lumière. Her fusion of art, identity, and performance echoes in the work of artists like Madonna and Lady Gaga.
"Amalgams and Graphts" by Nick Cave
When: January 10 - March 15, 2025
Where: Jack Shainman Gallery
Why it is Worth A Look: Nick Cave is evolving his "Soundsuits." Originally a response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991, the suits obscured the body of the wearer, providing anonymity and thereby safety. Here, Cave's "Amalgams" series conceals recognizable aspects of the body with natural forms like flowers and branches, all cast in large-scale bronze.
Know Before You Go: The second series on view, "Graphts," is the first time Cave has shown his face in his work, though he often incorporates other parts of his body in his pieces. The mixed media assemblages, crafted with needlepoint and fragments of serving trays, show the artist in fields of flowers and provide a moment of introspection.
"people and natural numbers" by Lucia Koch
When: January 16 - March 8, 2025
Where: Nara Roesler
Why it is Worth A Look: For over two decades, Brazilian artist Lucia Koch has transformed mundane cardboard boxes into mesmerizing architectural photographs. Through careful composition, these interior views of packaging create illusory spatial extensions beyond the gallery walls.
Know Before You Go: This exhibition features 14 recent works across sculpture and photography. Koch's practice explores how art can reshape space—whether through architectural elements like windows and screens, or her distinctive use of color as a distinct dimension rather than mere surface treatment.
"Early Works" by Tabboo!
When: January 8 - February 28, 2025
Where: Karma, Gordon Robichaux
Why it is Worth A Look: In vibrant acrylics, Tabboo! transforms his East Village world into works of art—capturing urban scenes, intimate portraits of friends, and whimsical arrangements of plants and animals with equal parts observation and imagination.
Know Before You Go: Stephen Tashjian, better known as Tabboo!, has long been a defining presence in the East Village. In the '80s, he was a performer at iconic venues like the Pyramid Club, Mudd Club, and Palladium.
"Leah Ke Yi Zheng"
When: January 17 - February 22, 2025
Where: Mendes Wood DM
Why it is Worth A Look: Just over a month ago, Mendes Wood DM announced its representation of Lea Ke Yi Zheng, as well as this forthcoming New York solo. The artist masterfully bridges East and West across silk canvases affixed to hand-crafted hardwood stretchers. She received early training in traditional Chinese painting, particularly Wang Xizhi's "spiritual calligraphy" and "picture of the mind" techniques, later adopting Western formalist influences to create something entirely new.
Know Before You Go: The artist's silk canvases posess a near translusence, then flooded with fields of color that meld her traditional education and avant-garde Western influences, picked up during later studies Stateside.
"I am a teapot" by Nicola Tyson
When: January 16 - February 22, 2025
Where: Petzel
Why it is Worth A Look: Yes, the title of this show is inspired by the 1939 nursery rhyme and dance I’m a Little Teapot, a playful ode to Nicola Tyson's color-washed canvases. The exhibition brings together two distinct series, both of which play with the use of negative space, or in this case primed white canvas left blank.
Know Before You Go: Tyson reimagines traditional portrayals of gender, the body, and desire, offering a bold response to artists like Hans Bellmer and Pablo Picasso. Her androgynous, hybrid figures—part human, part animal, and entirely enigmatic—challenge the male gaze and reject societal norms.
"Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance"
When: January 17 - March 1, 2025
Where: Pace
Why it is Worth A Look: Pace presented its first solo of Louise Nevelson's work in 1961, announcing representation of the artist only two years later. Now, it's celebrating its 62-year-relationship with the late artist by showing an exhibition of her later works. Drawing from Cubist and Constructivist movements, Nevelson revolutionized sculpture by applying collage principles to three dimensions across assemblages that transformed everyday objects into abstract compositions.
Know Before You Go: The show reflects a recent increase in attention to the artist's work, and precedes a forthcoming retrospective organized by the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, set to open next fall.
"Are My Hands Clean?" by Rajkamal Kahlon
When: January 10 - February 15, 2025
Where: PPOW
Why It's Worth A Look: Following 20 years of research into artwork as a form of political resistence, Rajkamal Kahlon is leveraging her knowledge in her second solo presentation with PPOW. She paints the body as a site of political violence, reappropriating historical texts into something new.
Know Before You Go: Kahlon tears, quite literally, from the pages of old German anthropological and scientific books, hand-painting over fragments of paper.
"Etel Adnan: This Beautiful Light"
When: January 22 - March 1, 2025
Where: White Cube
Why It's Worth A Look: This exhibition showcases works from the last 20 years of late Arab-American artist Etel Adnan's practice. Her mediums span large-scale ceramics, tapestries, paintings, works on paper, and leporellos, which are folded books sometimes several metres long.
Know Before You Go: Adnan, a well-known writer, only came to be known as a visual artist in the early 2010s, following an inclusion in Documenta 13. She cited influences for her color field paintings including photographers of the American West, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston.
"Pastels" by George Condo
When: Sprüth Magers: January 29 - March 1, 2025 Hauser & Wirth: January 29 - April 12, 2025
Where: Sprüth Magers, Hauser & Wirth
Why It's Worth A Look: This two-part exhibition, across Sprüth Magers and Hauser & Wirth, takes a look at the creative process behind one of contemporary art's most successful practitioners. Both galleries will be showcasing new works of pastel on paper.
Know Before You Go: The works on view test the limits of Condo's ability to improvise, all made without any preliminary sketches, and featuring wild flashes of gesso and pastel. Condo aims to illuminate the human psyche, both his own and his audience's.
