Venus Over Manhattan, all images by Art Observed

Over the last several years, the Independent Art Fair has built a name for itself as a dynamic and focused exhibition project, culling together small selections of exhibitors that emphasize curation and focus over the sprawling aisles of mega fairs and blue-chip magnets. This year, the fair has returns its 20th Century offering for the run of The Armory Show further uptown. The show, focusing in on historically-resonant works, makes for a striking new offering during Armory Week, and a fitting continuation of the fair’s well-established focus.

Norman Zammit at Karma

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Jonathas de Andrade at Galeria Nara Roseler

Despite a heat wave that made early September feel like mid-July in New York, this week, the fall art season and the promise of cooler weather has descended on The Big Apple, and New Yorkers are flocking back from their summer travels to kick off one of the busiest art seasons of the year at the Armory Show. This year, the Javits Center is home to over 225 booths, featuring selections from gallery veterans, non-profits, museums, and emerging gallerists from over 35 countries. The fair was notably divided into several sections such as Galleries, Solo, dedicated to single artists, Not-for-Profit, Focus, a section curated by Candice Hopkins, featuring solo- and dual-artist presentations that under-represented artists who draw on cultural connections, and Presents, featuring galleries that are less than 10 years old.

Leonard Baby at Anat Ebgi

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Katherine Bernhardt at David Zwirner, all images via Minji Son for Art Observed

With the first notes of fall drifting into the air, and August fading into September, attention turns this week to the South Korean capital of Seoul, where Frieze has reopened the newest iteration of its art fair franchise. Now in its second year, the fair, led by Frieze Seoul Director Patrick Lee, features over 120 galleries, with a strong focus on Asia alongside a range of galleries from countries around the globe, as well as its signature program of screenings, talks and other projects.

Theaster Gates at White Cube

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Malediction and Prayer (Installation View), via Modern Art

Taking its name from a Diamanda Galas record of the same name, Malediction and Prayer marks this year’s summer group show entry at London’s Modern Art. Delving into a range of richly expressive painting and sculpture throughout the show, the program takes on modes of seeing and representation that balances intimacy with intensity, dense layers with moments of triumphal revelation.  Read More »

Martin Wong, Malicious Mischief (Installation View), all images via Camden Art Center

Artist Martin Wong is widely recognised for his extraordinary depictions of social, sexual and political scenographies from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Weaving together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification, Wong stands out as an important countercultural voice at odds with the art establishment’s reactionary discourse at the time. This summer, the artist’s work is at the center of an impressive show at the Camden Art Center in London, tracing the artist’s works as an extension of his life. Read More »

Marcin Dudek, NEOPLAN (2023), via Edel Assanti

Artist Marcin Dudek’s work finds particular and complex sites for intervention in the language of the everyday, charging familiar forms and structures with a loose, vibrant energy that underscores cultural tensions, frictive languages, and modes of engagement that underline conflict and collision. This mode of practice finds particular expression in NEOPLAN, the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with Edel Assanti on at the gallery’s London exhibition space. and running concurrently with his solo show at Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp, and the launch of his new monograph. Read More »

Ugly Paintings (Installation View), via Nahmad Contemporary

This month, writer Dean Kissick and curator Eleanor Cayre have teamed up at Nahmad Contemporary to present a new exhibition titled Ugly Painting. Drawing on works that mine the deliberate use of grotesque, garish, or abject in brushwork, representation, composition, or coloring, the show presents a range of works that run through a range of confrontational and conceptual approaches to the human form, its representation, and its understanding.  Read More »

Christina Mackie, Token 31 (2020), via Herald Street

On this month at London’s Herald Street, artist Christina Mackie exhibits a range of ceramic works and watercolors that showcase the artist’s multidisciplinary engagement with color and material. Combining a body of ceramic sculptures called Tokens and paintings titled Seaports, the show uses pigments, earthenware, slips, glazes, and an array of fabrics, to investigates the physical and chemical properties of her mediums, and simultaneously expose their emotional subtexts.

Christina Mackie (Installation View), via Herald Street

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Susumu Kamijo, Bear Mountain (2023), via Alexander Berggruen

On this summer at Alexander Berggruen, the exhibition Levity presents a range of paintings that reflect on the comic and the absurd through a range of styles and techniques. Irony, mirth, the absurd, the evolving image of cartoon, and even darker, but amusing reads of the human condition serve as entry points into the language of the contemporary. Using humor as a mode to elicit a direct reaction from the viewer, the works on view press the viewer to move beyond their comfort zone. Read More »

Carol Bruns (Installation View), via White Columns

Brooklyn-based artist Carol Bruns marks her latest solo exhibition and first in Manhattan in over two decades with a body of recent works on view this summer at White Columns, continuing the artist’s work in a range of materials and forms that negotiate languages and ways of creating and approaching art and its production. Read More »