50 Shows You Need to See This Fall

____________

Berlin

Camille Henrot at KÖNIG GALERIE 

SEP. 5–NOV. 1, ALEXANDRINENSTRASSE 118–12

While still shy of 40, Henrot is a master at making sense of grand expanses of history and cultural output. For this latest project, she has created an immersive installation of images and ephemera sourced from eBay, museum storerooms, and her own personal archive. The objects are organized into four categories that trace life’s key stages from birth to death.

Hito Steyerl at KOW 

OPENING SEP. 17, Brunnenstraße 9

If you missed Steyerl’s Artists Space solo exhibition or her Venice Biennale installation—or, like us, you’re just eager to see more of her sci-fi, cybernetics-inspired masterworks—don’t miss this comprehensive show of videos and performative lectures in the German artist’s hometown. 

Mariana Castillo Deball at Wien Lukatsch 

SEP. 17–NOV. 14, SCHÖNEBERGER UFER 65

After mounting museum shows in Mexico and France earlier this year, Mexican-born Castillo Deball installs new totemic sculptures in Berlin. The works—products of the her interest in the anthropological and cultural significance of objects—resemble artifacts unearthed from ancient ruins and are interspersed with anachronistic forms like hardware, toys, and shapes reminiscent of Brancusi. 

____________

Brussels

Chris Martin at Galerie Rodolphe Janssen

Sep. 11–Oct. 17, Livornostraat 35

Martin’s solo show quite literally pushes painting beyond its conventional boundaries: he’ll install his work on the interior and exterior of the gallery. The New York-based artist, who’s hung onto his Brooklyn studio since the 1980s, saturates some canvases top-to-bottom with his signature bands of bright color and glitter. To others, he applies energetic black lines filled with watery passages of acrylic that let white gesso or bits of patterned paper towel show through. 

____________

Cape Town

Turiya Magadlela at blank projects 

OCT. 15–NOV. 21, 113-115 SIR LOWRY ROAD

Johannesburg-based Magadlela accentuates the meaning of the everyday objects she sources as materials. In her second solo show at blank projects, pantyhose and prison sheets are stitched together and stretched across wooden frames in visceral works that reference the marginalization of women and the wrongful imprisonment of black South African leaders, respectively. 

____________

Cologne

Qiu Shihua at Galerie Karsten Greve

Sep. 4–Oct. 31, Drususgasse 1-6

In this comprehensive show of the master contemporary Chinese painter’s work made between 2000 and 2013 (his career began in the 1960s), imagined landscapes are executed in pale veils of white with occasional hints of color that allude to the ethereal, spiritual effects of the natural world. 

____________

Copenhagen

Jose Dávila at Galleri Nicolai Wallner

Opening Oct. 8, Ny Carlsberg Vej 68

Dávila continues to prove himself a master of spatial exploration that hinges on suspension, playful weight distribution, and an astute focus on materials, both natural and industrial. In addition to the floor installations he’s known for, the Mexican artist will show smaller wall-mounted sculptures made from marble slabs bound by colorful ratchet straps. 

____________

Dubai

Nazgol Ansarinia at Green Art Gallery 

NOV. 15–DEC. 15, AL QUOZ 1, STREET 8, ALSERKAL AVENUE, UNIT 28

From her studio in Tehran, the Iranian artist examines the cultural and political transformations of her hometown by reimagining its urban landscape. Resin sculptures that resemble ancient columns are cleaved to reveal Arabic script, while motifs from public murals are transformed into three-dimensional surfaces. 

____________

Hong Kong

Ko Sin Tung at Edouard Malingue Gallery

oct. 8–Nov. 28, 33 Des Voeux Road Central

In her first major solo exhibition, the young Hong Kong-based artist departs from past works around issues of privacy and domestic life to explore industrial zones, like construction sites for the future railway to connect Hong Kong and mainland China. Fluorescent light installations, pixelated photographs of sunrises, and stacks of television screens guide visitors through the artist’s narrative.

____________

Istanbul

Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin at RAMPA

Sep. 2—Nov. 14, Şair Nedim Caddesi No: 21a, Besiktas

A member of the first generation of Turkish artists to participate in the newly globalized art world of the 1990s, Alptekin addresses the late capitalist condition in which he suddenly found himself participating. RAMPA’s major retrospective is the first gallery show of the artist’s work since his death in 2007 and includes 22 pieces produced in the last 20 years of his life alongside selections from his archives.

____________

London

Max Lamb at Gallery FUMI

Sep. 21–27, Somerset House

“My Grandfather’s Tree,” mounted in collaboration with London Design Festival, shows Lamb’s heroic attempt at preserving a monumental ash tree from his grandfather’s Yorkshire, England farm. Aiming to maintain the tree’s identity, he dissected it into “furniture-height” segments, resulting in a series of stools, tables, and chairs.

Luke Diiorio at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

Sep. 4–Oct. 3, 6 Heddon Street

In his first solo exhibition in the UK, Diiorio continues his practice of folding raw linen and canvas into textured, minimalist works. Through creases of varied thickness and deliberate staining with household bleaches and baking soda, the New York-based artist creates subtle patterns that feel both everyday (a venetian blind, a folded shirt) and illusory (an origami masterpiece, a shapeshifting magic carpet). 

“Faux Amis” at Simon Lee Gallery

Sep. 8–Oct. 7, 12 Berkeley Street

The gallery has summoned 20 of its represented artists to choose “false friends,” fellow artists whose outputs offer engaging dialogues with their own. The impressive pairings—like Angela Bulloch and Bridget Riley, Sarah Crowner and Egon Schiele, and Gary Simmons and Gerhard Richter—flood two floors, promising an enticing series of contrasts.

Torey Thornton at Stuart Shave/Modern Art

Sep. 4–Oct. 3, 4-8 Helmet Row

Thornton brings new paintings—known for balancing a buoyant cast of objects (flowers, helicopters), invented characters (white horses, men in hats), and abstract forms—to London for his first show with Stuart Shave. In “Kneed a Sea Ware Groin,” the 25-year-old artist explores the pictorial possibilities of abstraction in panels that feel like repositories for fleeting but exuberant experiences, memories, and dreams. 

Ella Kruglyanskaya at Thomas Dane Gallery

Sep. 4–Oct. 3, 3 & 11 Duke Street St James's

A new set of Kruglyanskaya’s active canvases, bursting with competing patterns, big gestures, and statuesque female figures, arrive in London for her first show with Thomas Dane. Following solo exhibitions at Dallas’s The Power Station, and London’s Studio Voltaire in 2014, the New York-based artist’s body of work—a mash-up of portraiture, still life, graphic design, and draftsmanship—is being recognized for reenergizing representational painting. 

Cerith Wyn Evans at White Cube

Sep. 23–Nov. 15, 144-152 Bermondsey Street

Conceptual artist Wyn Evans offers new static and kinetic sculptures at White Cube in his 8th solo show at the gallery. In a body of work that has incorporated fireworks, text, and sound, the Welsh artist dissects and reconstitutes cultural patterns related to language, gesture, and perception.

____________

Los Angeles

“Catfish” at Anat Ebgi

SEP. 11–OCT. 24, 2660 S LA CIENEGA BOULEVARD

Drawing its name from the slang for people who fake identities on the internet, “Catfish” features the digital paintings, collages, and sculptures of artists Petra Cortright, Kate Steciw, Letha Wilson, and Margo Wolowiec and plays with the representational languages at stake in digital constructions and image dissemination.

Alex Hubbard at Maccarone

Sep. 19–Dec. 20, 330 South Mission Road

Manhattan mainstay Maccarone opens their Los Angeles space with “Basic Perversions,” an exhibition of Hubbard’s new work—minimalist abstractions that, in the context of L.A., recall California Light and Space traditions augmented by the use of intentionally messy chemical reactions. The gridded, semi-translucent works have the iridescence of a piece of plexi bathed too long in that quintessentially L.A. mix of air pollution and sunshine. 

____________

Madrid

Alain Biltereyst at Nogueras Blanchard

Sep. 10–Nov. 7, Doctor Fourquet 4 

Biltereyst is known for small-scale acrylics on wood panels featuring crisp graphic patterns inspired by daily life in Brussels (trucks, advertisements, a patterned blouse). The works were the talk of NADA NY this year, making for a highly anticipated new show in Madrid, titled “Dear Everyday.” 

____________

Mexico City

Lucas Arruda at LULU

Sep. 18–Nov. 22, Calle Bajío 231

Arruda’s enchanting, abstract paintings have garnered international attention, showing in his native São Paulo, Berlin, London, and New York. (He also made it onto Artsy’s list of “30 Emerging Artists to Watch This Summer”.) For his first exhibition in Mexico, Arruda will show paintings along with a new light-projection work.

____________

Milan

Ry David Bradley at Brand New Gallery

Sep. 23–Nov. 7, via Farini 32

David Bradley’s online research archive “PAINTED, ETC.” puts him at the helm of the critical discussion of post-internet painting and his creative work finds itself similarly entrenched in digital discourse. His exhibition of contemporary technique-based paintings and sculptural modifications, “Where Do You Want To Go Today?” takes as its namesake and inspiration the scores of anonymous callers responding to Microsoft’s 1994 ad campaign.

____________

Mumbai

“Kashmir: Insider/Outsider” at Sakshi Gallery

SEP. 19–OCT. 17, 6/19 2ND FLOOR, GRANTS BUILDING, ARTHUR BUNDER ROAD

Plagued by boundary disputes and religious conflict, the South Asian region of Kashmir remains physically and spectrally scarred. This show combines the work of two photographers who take the valley as their subject. Amit Mehra approaches the region as a foreigner from Delhi, and Veer Munshi returned from exile to capture the ruined homes of his fellow Pandits—Sakshi weaves together a political narrative that captures the traces of pain inherent in the silence after strife.

____________

New York

Alina Szapocznikow at Andrea Rosen Gallery

OCT. 30–DEC. 5, 525 W 24TH STREET

In explorations of bodies and memory, Szapocznikow’s challenging, emotional sculptures redefined their medium. The gallery’s first solo show of the artist’s work since officially beginning to represent her estate last year will feature 16 largely unseen works alongside some of Szapocznikow’s major figurative sculptures from the 1960s and ’70s, contextualized by her drawings from the same period.

Isa Genzken at David Zwirner

Sep. 16–Oct. 31, 519 W 19th Street

Alongside bespectacled Nefertiti busts and a suite of 2D collages, Genzken’s new mannequin-based assemblages are clad in outlandish outfits made from the artist’s own closet, metallic foils, and packing materials. The works continue the “Schauspieler (Actors)” series she debuted in her 2013 MoMA retrospective and span the gallery space in carefully curated groupings that place viewers in the throes of a social experiment.

Martine Syms at Bridget Donahue

SEP. 17–NOV. 1, 99 BOWERY

In her first New York gallery solo show, Syms questions cultural and racial tropes by excavating references from ads, movies, and television. An installation of double-sided photographs explores body politics and, in particular, why the gestures of black women are often exaggerated by media and internet memes. 

Cameron at Jeffrey Deitch

Sep. 8–Oct. 17, 76 Grand Street

Jeffrey Deitch brings a slice of Los Angeles history back to New York—to his former eponymous gallery’s space, to be specific—with a historical exhibition of mystical drawings, paintings, poems, and ephemera by Cameron. The artist was a key figure in Southern California’s 1950s counterculture movement and muse to occultist Jack Parsons and cult filmmaker Kenneth Anger. 

Ettore Sottsass at Friedman Benda

Sep. 10–Oct. 17, 515 W 26th Street

Ten years in the making, the gallery’s newest Sottsass installment homes in on the Memphis pioneer’s fertile early years, from 1955 to 1969, with over 100 rare and museum-quality works including ceramics, furniture, lighting, and vintage photographs, representing both commissioned projects and artistic experimentations.

Franz West at Gagosian Gallery

SEP. 11–NOV. 7, 976 MADISON AVENUE

A rebel sculptor who—radically, in the 1970s—declared that his art should be handled, touched, and sat on, West made furniture that supported his claim that art could be functional and incorporated into everyday life. Chairs upholstered with painted canvas and tables accented with cardboard are concept-driven, cheeky, and practical all at once. 

Ed Atkins at Gavin Brown’s enterprise

OPENING DATES COMING SOON, 461 WEST 126TH STREET

Young UK-based artist Atkins christens Gavin Brown’s new three-story headquarters in Harlem, with an installation of hi-def digital videos that riff on virtual reality and video game culture, and their attendant hyperreal aesthetics.

Trisha Baga at Greene Naftali

SEP. 3–OCT. 3, 508 W 26TH STREET

Baga is known for filling rooms with immersive multimedia and sculptural installations. Her new exhibition—coming together in the form of text, projections, and more traditional 2D and 3D work—is presented as taking place in a distant future, continuing Baga’s exploration of perceptual experience at the boundary of real and virtual spaces.

Mike Kelley at Hauser & Wirth

SEP. 10–OCT. 24, 511 West 18TH STREET

For the last major series in his career, Kelley looked to Superman. In Hauser & Wirth’s first exhibition since announcing their representation of Kelley’s estate, the gallery presents “Kandors”—titled after Superman’s birthplace—in which glowing, resin-cast, bell-jar-scaled reconstructions of the mythologized city are accompanied by an unsettling recreation of the hero’s Fortress of Solitude.

Rudolf Stingel and Marianne Vitale at Karma

SEP. 13–OCT. 13, 39 GREAT JONES STREET

At Karma, art-world couple Stingel and Vitale present their first overtly collaborative project. Here, Stingel follows his floor-to-ceiling, carpeted installation during the 2013 Venice Biennale by swathing gallery floors with a wall-to-wall oriental rug. In the center of the room, Vitale—who is known for raw, minimalist sculptures built from railway joints and wood that she chars in performative bonfires—tops Stingel’s piece with a single towering sculpture. 

Nari Ward at Lehmann Maupin

Sep. 9–Nov. 7, 201 Chrystie Street

In his third solo exhibition with the gallery, Ward debuts large-scale copper “Breathing Panels” punctured with ancient Congolese prayer symbols and patterned by footsteps made by covering his shoes in patina. In a new large-scale floor installation, Ground, over seven hundred masonry bricks mimic symbols used in quilts on the Underground Railroad. Engaging with historical narratives of race, the Jamaican-born artist challenges identity politics with reference-rich abstraction.

Adrián Villar Rojas at Marian Goodman Gallery

Sep. 9–Oct. 10, 24 W 57th Street

Deploying the dry, cracked surface of raw clay, Villar Rojas constructs ephemeral, character-filled worlds as part of site-specific installations that explore human culture, history, and our relationship to the planet. The show, “Two Suns,” will be Marian Goodman Gallery’s first solo exhibition of the artist’s work. 

Carl Andre at Mnuchin Gallery

SEP. 9–DEC. 5, 45 E 78TH STREET

Minimalist master Andre revolutionized sculpture with his flattened modular floor pieces, investigations of what he called “sculpture as place.” Mnuchin Gallery contextualizes this important work in “Carl Andre In His Time,” where Andre’s early sculptures will be featured along with works by Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, and Frank Stella, among others.

Robert Rauschenberg at Pace Gallery

Oct. 23–Dec. 12, 534 W 25th Street

In classic Rauschenberg style, the new technique of image-transfer he developed in the 1990s challenged both his own previous process and painting at large. Manifested in works on paper, canvas, and fresco, this gathering of the artist’s late works is the first since his death in 2008 and also marks Pace’s recent representation of the Rauschenberg estate. 

Will Ryman at Paul Kasmin

SEP. 10–OCT. 17, 515 W. 27TH STREET

Ryman’s Situation Room (2012-14), a life-sized sculpture in crushed black coal of the scene in the White House’s intelligence chamber during the Navy SEAL raid on Osama Bin Laden, is one of two impressive installations that make up his new exhibition. The other, Classroom (2015), is a new work comprised of casts of 12 schoolchildren, each sculpture made from a different economically significant material, including cadmium, titanium, salt, iron, oil, chrome, copper, wood, and gold. 

“The Xerox Book” at Paula Cooper Gallery

Sep. 12–Oct. 24, 534 W 21st Street

This historical exhibition resurfaces an important conceptual art touchstone that has been somewhat hidden under history’s rug. The Xerox Book was conceived in 1968 as an exhibition-as-book—a low-budget, easily disseminated volume of 25-page projects by Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Lawrence Weiner. Paula Cooper’s three-dimensional revival includes works directly related to the original publication. 

Dana Schutz at Petzel Gallery

SEP. 10–OCT. 24, 456 W 18TH STREET

Since Schutz’s last New York gallery show in 2012, she has ferried her bold, buoyant paintings to solo museum exhibitions across the globe. In Chelsea, “Fight in an Elevator” offers canvases packed with bottled, ready-to-burst energy. Large, tangled figures push at the boundaries of each piece, which represent the walls of tiny interior spaces like closets and bathrooms. 

Takuro Kuwata at Salon 94

SEP. 9–OCT. 24, 1 FREEMAN ALLEY

Kuwata’s explosive ceramics—metallic vessels oozing with droplets of gold or silver, fusions of stone and porcelain covered in thick, cracked layers of glossy glaze—appear to defy the medium’s steep traditions, yet ironically, and as the title of his new show “Dear Tea Bowl” suggests, the Japanese artist’s radical forms reflect a mastery of classic techniques. 

Katherine Bernhardt at Venus Over Manhattan

SEP. 9–OCT. 24, 980 MADISON AVENUE

Known for her expressive gestural painting and commodity-inspired motifs (think bananas, basketballs, cigarettes, socks), Bernhardt presents new paintings that resemble patterning while maintaining her loose, stream-of-consciousness style. Tropical, punchy, and kitschy, the works were inspired by time the artist spent in Puerto Rico.

Jessica Sanders at KANSAS

SEP. 12–OCT. 18, 210 RIVINGTON STREET

Sanders’s background in ceramics established her affinity for materials that subtly convey their forms and whose process involves room for play—evidenced by the beeswax she’s used to create the paintings that have put her on the map. “Ambiguous Warmth,” KANSAS’s first solo exhibition of Sanders’s work, will feature iterations of her wax paintings alongside a new series of slip cast porcelain sculptures.

____________

Paris

Tarik Kiswanson at Almine Rech

SEP. 5–OCT. 3, 64 RUE DE TURENNE

The oxidized soldering stains that bind Kiswanson’s gleaming metal sculptures show the artist’s concern for joining seams: between materials, the work and its context, art and its viewer. Of Palestinian descent, raised in Sweden, and based in Paris, Kiswanson enjoys his first solo exhibition with Almine Rech this fall. His new series alludes to a range of cultural references—wall-mounted works simultaneously recall religious icons, tribal masks, and decorative sconces. 

____________

San Francisco

Nicholas Nixon at Fraenkel Gallery

SEP. 10–OCT. 24, 49 GEARY STREET

This four-decade survey of Nixon’s wide body of work—printed using massive negatives that yield piercingly accurate detail—shows the artist’s remarkable ability to provide a sense of intimacy across subjects.

Jay DeFeo at Hosfelt Gallery

Sep. 12–Oct. 10, 260 Utah Street

An extensive new Jay DeFeo show—including 46 works that have never been exhibited—looks at the late artist’s paintings, drawings, and photographs through the lens of the “Alter Ego.” The exhibition homes in on polarities and relationships across works and series, particularly DeFeo’s penchant for creating “twins.”

____________

Shanghai

Li Shan at James Cohan Gallery

Sep. 7–Oct. 17, 170 Yueyang Road

Beijing-based artist Li employs painting as a means of storytelling. Each of her works—landscapes, city scenes, slices of the natural world—represents a vignette taken from first-hand experience. Her latest show presents a new series of 22 paintings inspired by recent travels in Germany and Japan, and 12 early works from the ’70s featuring traditional Chinese imagery.

____________

Singapore

“Dear Painter” at Sundaram Tagore

Sep. 4–Oct. 25, 5 Lock Road, Gillman Barracks 

Nine artists who call Singapore home pay tribute to the nation—now celebrating 50 years of independence—through newly commissioned works that respond to the historical significance of paint in an exhibition led by independent curator June Yap. 

____________

Stockholm

Annika von Hausswolff at Andrehn-Schiptjenko

Aug. 20–Sep. 26, Hudiksvallsgatan 8, 2nd Floor

When Polaroid closed its doors in 2008, Swedish photographer von Hausswolff felt crippled. In response, she began mining archives of photographs that had been buried for decades, then digitally capturing and screen printing them onto enamel. The ghostly manipulations on view at Andrehn-Schiptjenko are condensed acts of preservation, intervention, and photographic experimentation.  

Jonas Dahlberg at Galerie Nordenhake

OCT. 1–NOV. 7, HUDIKSVALLSGATAN 8

In the midst of realizing his winning proposal for the July 22 Memorial in Oslo—a project that will commemorate the 2011 attacks on Norway’s Utøya island—Dahlberg presents a smaller but equally contemplative body of new work in “Diorama.” In the show, intimate photographs of small birds lured to a perch by Dahlberg’s window join a mesmerizing video that tracks the mechanical inner workings of a music box. Both projects explore the overlap of physical and psychological experience. 

____________

Tokyo

Omer Fast at TARO NASU

SEP. 11–OCT. 10, 1-2-11 HIGASHI-KANDA, CHIYODA-KU