As art fairs flood New York—starting with Frieze and followed by Independent—with a myriad of notable auctions, as well as the Whitney Biennial, the scene is definitely bustling this spring.
Though there are a sizable amount of well-planned museum shows to add to that mix too, galleries have slowly been taking over the Tribeca neighborhood and their presence has not gone unnoticed. As such, below is a list of six must-see shows during Frieze week in New York.
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Peter Nadin at Off Paradise
Image Credit: Photo Alon Koppel/Courtesy the artist and Off Paradise, New York A battle between the inner self and the external world are at play in Peter Nadin’s latest show, “The Invisible World” at Off Paradise. Inspired by the secluded farm in the Catskills where Nadin lives, his newest paintings and sculptures weave together Biblical narratives and personal memories. The pleasantly ridiculous Adam Installing Utilities in the Garden of Eden Under the Devil’s Fire (2023), for example, features maintenance workers performing their labor while a naked Adam and Eve wander through the landscape. This irreverent work is paired with equally amusing ones like Three Self Portraits with a Ripening Lemon (2023), featuring the artist’s image render on the inside of the sole of a worn brown dress shoe, which is sunk in a piece of cast bronze.
Through May 17, at 120 Walker Street.
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Kaloki Nyamai at James Cohan
Image Credit: © Kaloki Nyamai 2024. Courtesy the artist, James Cohan, New York, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin. The title of Kaloki Nyamai’s “Twe Vaa,” which translates from the Kenyan artist’s ancestral language of Kikamba to “We are here,” serves as a statement of presence. In his layered mixed-media canvases, Nyamai questions the tumult of the world in which we live. Accounts of political unrest are paired with moments of leisure, which emerge and recede in the works. Photo-transferred newsprint and images from Kenyan history and other parts of Africa recall a legacy of violent colonization, while vivid colors and depictions of fun activities, like dancing and embracing, offer respite.
Through May 4, at 48 Walker Street.
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Milano Chow at Chapter NY
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist and Chapter NY. Photo Charles Benton Milano Chow’s graphite renderings and collaged photo transfers draw inspiration from Los Angeles. The show borrows its title, “Yesterday’s,” from a now defunct 1980s restaurant in the city’s Westwood district. The intricate drawings of long-gone building facades border on the surrealist, with repeating architectural patterns and introducing the occasional lone figure.
Through May 4, at 60 Walker Street.
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Terry Fox at Artists Space
Image Credit: Courtesy Artists Space, New York. Photo Filip Wolak Conceptual artist Terry Fox (1943–2008) pushed the bounds of performance, video, and sound art. Among the first generation of Conceptual artists in the 1960s and ’70s, Fox’s physical and psychological performances were an exercise in endurance. This exhibition, “All These Different Things Are Sculpture,” brings together a selection of the artist’s works from the late ’60s through the early ’90s, among them, documentation for Levitation (1970), wherein Fox fasted and then laid on top of a dirt square for six hours surrounded by elemental fluids. Despite living for many years with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Fox continued to create performative works that both questioned the human condition and pushed the boundaries of body art.
Through May 11, at 11 Cortlandt Alley.
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Carol Wainio at Arsenal Contemporary Art New York
Image Credit: Photo Richard Max Tremblay Imbued with the feeling of an Impressionist fever dream, Carol Wainio’s monochromatic canvases place Western children’s fables in elaborate landscapes. Though they at first seem whimsical, familiar stories and scenes are often surrounded by frenzied brushstrokes that underscore important messages related to climate change and mechanical developments.
Through May 25, at 21 Cortlandt Alley, 2nd Floor.
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Rachel Eulena Williams at Canada
Image Credit: Courtesy Canada, New York. Visitors will find everything and the kitchen sink in Rachel Eulena Williams’s latest exhibition, “Dream Speak.” More accurately, materials like rope, found fabrics, silk screen prints, and scavenged hardware comprise the vibrantly colored works here. Among the rich surfaces are shapes derived from Andinkra symbols, a pictographic language of the Bono people, from present-day Ghana and Côte d’Ivorie, as well as pagan symbols like the triple goddess. Though the surfaces are evocative, the tactility and sheer material abundance of the work is, perhaps, the true lodestar.
Through June 1, at 60 Lispenard Street.
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Gisela Colón at Efraín López
Image Credit: Courtesy Efraín López, New York. Photo installshots.art Organic materials and minimal forms abound at Gisela Colón’s first exhibition, “Mountains Are Inside Me,” with Efraín López. In her sculptures, the Puerto Rican, LA-based artist considers the relationship between humans and the land. Intimate works, such as Tierra de Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite), 2024, recreate the Colón’s own body (to scale), as a way to prod personal and collective histories and identities. The show offers two new sculptural works, an early painting, a selection of intimately scaled works on paper, and an architectural intervention.
Through June 22, at 356 Broadway, Unit LL15.
