The new year in New York opened with a series of exceptional exhibitions, setting the tone for an art season packed with discovery and innovation. From long-overlooked artists finally getting their due to fresh debuts by rising stars at top-tier galleries, the city’s offerings this January are as compelling as they are varied. And while the temperatures may be unforgiving, these shows are well worth braving the cold for. Our list of must-sees across the Upper East Side, Chelsea and Tribeca will help you customize your art viewing itinerary so you don’t miss a single standout.
On the Upper East Side
Marie Laurencin at Almine Rech, through February 22
Although French painter Marie Laurencin enjoyed significant commercial success during her lifetime, her name faded into relative obscurity after her death in the late 1950s. Recently, however, her work has reemerged as museums and collectors have begun to reassess her delicate yet radical vision, sparking renewed market interest. Last year’s retrospective at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia further cemented her place among the overlooked figures of the early 20th-century Parisian scene, proving that she was perhaps one of the best—certainly among her male peers—at capturing the spirit and atmosphere of that golden age. Trained in porcelain decoration, Laurencin carried this sensitivity into her paintings and watercolors, rendering her subjects with refined elegance and a mastery of small, impressionistic color touches that distilled both their being and their essence. Though closely linked to Cubism and Fauvism and often associated with the poetic sensibilities of Orphism, she forged a distinct style of her own, drawing from the refined aesthetics of Rococo and Art Nouveau while embracing a newfound freedom of gesture and impressionistic abstraction.
From her twenties onward, Laurencin devoted herself to painting women—always beautiful, always ethereal—developing an elegant, deeply personal approach to femininity in all its forms. As she reportedly quipped in a 1952 interview, “Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier.” Now, Almine Rech’s Upper East Side location offers a rare chance to see a luminous selection of her works spanning 1905 to 1952, including jewel-toned paintings and intuitive watercolors that capture the graceful sensuality of her subjects. Despite their intimate scale, the works in the show are priced between $60,000 and $250,000—a testament to Laurencin’s resurgent market appeal. But beyond beauty, her art was also deeply personal, shaped by a singular queer aesthetic that, as the curators of the Barnes retrospective recently argued, “subtly but radically challenges existing narratives of modern European art.”
Etel Adnan at White Cube, through March 1
Etel Adnan’s “This Beautiful Light” at White Cube New York.”>
Lebanese artist Etel Adnan is getting her long-awaited exhibition at White Cube New York, a culmination of years in the making following her rediscovery just a decade ago. After her debut with the gallery in London (2014) and later in Hong Kong, her jewel-toned abstractions now take center stage in New York, distilling the essence of a landscape—both external and internal—into a few luminous blocks of pure color. An incredibly talented colorist, Adnan’s compositions seek to revive memory, collapsing light, color, energy and dimensional form into simplified yet intensely evocative planes. “The Beautiful Light,” as the show’s title suggests, is not merely depicted but condensed into psychologically charged abstractions, where images and sensations resurface, dissolving into indistinct yet deeply personal recollections of the places she lived, breathed, and was often forced to leave behind. Timed with the centenary of her birth, the exhibition at White Cube offers a sweeping celebration of Adnan’s multifaceted creative oeuvre within Arab-American culture. Alongside her luminous paintings, the show presents tapestries, gouaches and a monumental ceramic mural, tracing the interconnected motifs, mediums and ideas that have come to define her practice.
In Tribeca and the Bowery
Melike Kara at Bortolami (55 Walker), through February 15
With her dynamic and densely entwined abstract gestures, Kurdish-born, German-raised artist Melike Kara turns the canvas into a space of remembrance and resemblance. Transferring onto its surface a complex orchestration of psychosomatic motions between mind, body and soul, the energy and spontaneous flow of her lyrical yet vigorous mark-making seem to emerge from a direct dialogue with both her Kurdish ancestral roots and the deeper, more personal layers of her upbringing within another culture. Kurdish tapestries might serve as a starting point for Kara’s gestural abstractions, but rather than simply referencing tradition, she freely appropriates, manipulates and reinterprets it—reviving cultural memory through an act of overwriting. With each stroke, she physically claims possession of both the canvas and her heritage, channeling them into vibrant, fluid abstractions.
For her debut show at Bortolami, Kara extends this exploration to questions of motherhood, expanding her investigation into belonging, heritage, and loss—concepts that have long shaped her practice. Covering the gallery walls is an expansive installation that further explores the layered nature of motherhood and identity, weaving together family photographs and a text atlas of rewritten poems in Kurdish, German and English. In this multiplicity of languages and cultural signifiers confronting the same universal existential concerns, Kara reflects on how belonging to multiple realities allows for a process of transformation—one that moves beyond trauma and loss toward the construction of a consciously chosen identity. “Many roots can remain and develop at the same time,” she told Observer.
Nick Cave at Jack Shainman Gallery, through March 15
Gallerist Jack Shainman may have moved more quietly in recent years compared to the mega-galleries, but his roster speaks for itself, counting some of the most important Black artists of our time—Barkley L. Hendricks, Kerry James Marshall, Rose B. Simpson, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Nick Cave, to name just a few. Now, Cave takes center stage as the star of the inaugural exhibition in Shainman’s new, grandiose Tribeca space inside the historic Clock Tower Building at 46 Lafayette Street, a former bank adorned with lavish Beaux-Arts details. Apparently, nobody could figure out what to do with the massive 20,000-square-foot space—at one point, it was even listed as a potential restaurant. But Shainman saw something else. With its soaring 29-foot-high coffered ceilings, arched windows and stately white marble columns, the space was practically begging for large-scale installations and ambitious exhibitions. Enter Amalgam (Origin), 2024, Cave’s monumental sculpture that now dominates the main gallery hall. According to Artnet, the piece has already been placed with the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan—helping Shainman recoup the $18.2 million investment it took to secure the space. The architecture alone is worth checking out, but Cave’s spectacular show makes this a must-visit in the coming months.
Huidi Xiang at YveYANG, through March 8
In the gallery’s back room—a former sewing machine factory—Huidi Xiang makes her debut solo exhibition with YveYANG, staging a multifaceted, site-specific choreography of sculptural presences that reflect on the dynamics of power, labor and care. Inspired by the ever-familiar Disney cartoon Cinderella, Xiang in “goes around in circles, til very, very dizzy” probes the more insidious messages embedded in the story, peeling back its glossy, magical veneer to expose the labor lurking beneath its effortless facade. Across the space, small, medium, and large interventions float or hang from the walls, reconstructing the pop-culture imagery of Disney’s world—one she absorbed as a child despite growing up in China. Zeroing in on the scene where animals dress Cinderella, Xiang reframes it as a subtle allegory of marginalized labor. “At the time, I was creating a body of work around the labor of cleaning, with my research expanding into care and domestic labor,” she explains. “This led me to realize that the exhibition would be the perfect site to explore another form of domestic care labor—the labor of sewing, which has also played a significant role in shaping labor reform in the U.S.”
Gwen Hollingsworth at island (formerly Rubber Factory), through February 15.
A fascinating depth defines the shadowy, nebulous abstractions of Los Angeles-born painter Gwen Hollingsworth. Her subtle swathes of dark tone-on-tone color create a shimmering surface that seems to contain entire realms—natural, psychological and spiritual. Exploring fluctuating sensations of darkness, she dives into the uncharted abysses of the subconscious and the infinite vastness of the cosmos. Informed by Daoism, the Chinese spiritual practice that emphasizes the interconnected energy of all things, Hollingsworth interprets gardens and landscapes as sacred spaces, treating the canvas as both a sanctuary and site of self-discovery. Deeply meditative and contemplative, her works emerge from a personal ritual in which she surrenders to the canvas, embracing her Chinese heritage through a distinctly feminine cosmological vision—one that opens pathways to broader perspectives, attuned to inescapable yet ineffable natural forces.
In Chelsea
Giorgio Morandi at David Zwirner, through February 22
An extraordinary selection of paintings by Italian master Giorgio Morandi, drawn from the prestigious Magnani-Rocca collection, is now on view at David Zwirner, New York. Elegantly curated to allow each work the space to breathe and resonate, the exhibition offers a rare glimpse into Morandi’s relentless observational practice—one that spanned six decades and saw him spend hours, even entire days, painting his iconic still lifes in an effort to distill reality to its most profound essence. One of the most significant presentations of Morandi’s work in New York since “Giorgio Morandi: 1890-1964,” the artist’s 2008 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition is curated by Morandi scholar Dr. Alice Ensabella and organized in collaboration with the Magnani-Rocca Foundation.
Louise Nevelson at Pace Gallery, through March 1
Another museum-quality exhibition on view this month is “Shadow Dance,” a Louise Nevelson solo presentation at Pace Gallery. Taking over the entire ground floor, her enigmatic black and white assemblages transform stacked objects into mystical, abstract compositions—both reassembling and transcending the ordinary materials that compose them. “My total conscious search in life has been for a new seeing, a new image, a new insight,” Nevelson said in a statement, and that pursuit is fully realized here. Unified by her signature black paint, her monochromatic wooden sculptures enclose found objects within box-like structures, creating intricate plays of shadow and depth where darkness itself becomes an active element. The exhibition pairs Nevelson’s iconic black and white sculptures with a selection of collages, including several rarely seen and never-before-exhibited masterworks from the 1970s and 1980s.
Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, through February 21
With its imagination-sparking title, “Only the Wicked,” this exhibition by artist duo Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg transforms the gallery into an enchanting world populated by the fantastical characters seen in their mesmerizing stop-motion videos. Mysterious figures and unsettling visuals fill this dreamlike forest, shifting fluidly between haunting, dark and humorous tones. Drawing inspiration from fairy tales, their videos’ archetypal characters and anthropomorphic figures serve as allegories for the irrationality of human behavior, embodying universal existential struggles that expose the tensions between desire, fault and selfish impulse.
Alina Perez at Yossi Milo, through March 8
For her debut show with Yossi Milo New York, Cuban-American artist Alina Perez unveils a striking new suite of pastel works that push her ongoing exploration of familial narrative and the ways imagination can serve as a conduit for healing and action. Rich in symbolism and erotism, her vibrant scenes pulse with an emotional urgency, animated by the raw, gestural energy of charcoal and pastel. Perez intuitively surrenders to both her personal and collective subconscious, drawing from a reservoir of images and existential tensions to construct her own imagined universe. Her compositions act as both recollections and releases, channeling suppressed traumas and present emotions onto paper. The result is a body of work imbued with an almost unbearable humanity, oscillating between passion, love and violence while relentlessly searching for a deeper, more intimate connection to ancestral spirituality and the natural world.
Ryan Villamael at Silverlens, through March 1
For his first exhibition in the United States, Filipino artist Ryan Villamael presents a series of intimately scaled plant imitations, meticulously crafted from colonial and contemporary maps and encased within delicate bell jars. These jewel-like yet organic sculptures exude a sense of fragility, layered with meaning as they reflect the lasting traumas of colonial history. Each map is meticulously trimmed, sliced, and assembled by hand, its deconstruction revealing the artificiality of cartography and the power dynamics embedded within its lines. Both autobiographical and historical, this series extends Villamael’s ongoing exploration of the Philippines’ complex, storied history of migration—intertwining his own family’s journey with the nation’s broader geopolitical currents. Through these intricate works, he highlights the tensions between political decisions, individual destinies, and the sweeping force of historical events.
