NYC art map and recs, 10/21/25 - 10/26/25
Hi folks! My FOMO of missing Frieze in London turned into JOMO (joy of missing out) with an especially art-filled weekend in New York including a long downtown gallery crawl on Saturday followed by Hunter Open Studios, and a short downtown excursion on Sunday of quite possibly the wackiest trio of things I have seen all year including an art robot rumble, an opening in a laundromat, and a visit to a gallery transformed into a British 1980s living room.
I know some of you who know me personally have heard me talk about this, but I’m absolutely a crazy person when it comes to not wanting to see any images of an exhibition before it opens, and I stand by the fact that many of the best experiences I have are the ones where I have zero prior context about what I’m going to see. This came into particularly strong view for me upon encountering Jan Hüskes: Riegel at Gratin.
The Instagram post announcing the exhibition is a bit of a bait and switch, with truly no useful information about what the exhibition actually is about, and it was an absolute breath of fresh air to go into the exhibition and have what felt like an increasingly rare moment of absolutely unmediated experience with work that felt to me very much itself about an embodied encounter. I realize this is really not how most people experience art or want to experience art and that I’m privileged to be able to see whatever I want to without having to have prior knowledge, and I’m also a little bit of two minds about how effective of a strategy this is for galleries. I will absolutely be seduced by a really janky looking image and / or lack of context for an exhibition, but I know that for most galleries this is really counter-intuitive for making sales. I’m curious if any of you have strong thoughts about this, and / or want to tell me about a memorable unmediated art encounter you’ve had.
It’s another busy week in New York despite being Paris Art Week (ok, a little bit of FOMO there). Downtown Autumn Art Night takes place on October 23rd with a bunch of galleries staying open late, and Madison Avenue Fall Gallery Walk is on October 25th. Additionally, Stay Frosty a self-described “part trunk show, part festival, and part site-specific exhibition” organized by Bravin Lee Projects takes place this weekend in a Harlem parking lot.
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Geography Brief
- Love’s Club opens its inaugural exhibition in collaboration with CHART, Sam Branden: Alloy on Friday, October 24th, 6pm - 9pm
- Sitting Room Gallery returns after a 9-month hiatus with the exhibition Jimmy Edgar: Divine Presence on Thursday October 23rd, 6pm - 9pm
Openings — All exhibition openings are 6pm - 8pm unless otherwise noted — but I do recommend double checking the galleries’ websites / Instagrams before going anywhere!
Monday, October 20th
Pierre Leguillon: Held at Emmelines
Tuesday, October 21st
Nicolette Reim: Modern Trash at Noho M55 Gallery *Opening reception October 23rd, 6pm - 8pm
Melissa Barousse Sarat: Unexpected Allies at Noho M55 Gallery *Opening reception October 23rd, 6pm - 8pm
Arlene Farenc: Skipping Along at Atlantic Gallery *Opening reception October 23rd, 6pm - 8pm
Barak Wrobel & Alan Carey: Interconnected at Sojourner *Opening Reception October 22nd, 6pm - 9pm
Wednesday, October 22nd
RJ: Transit at bitforms
Jason Trotter: INTERACTION at Voltz Clarke *No opening reception
Thursday, October 23rd
Katherine Bradford: Communal Table at Canada
Richard Dial: Wise Spirit at March
Four Dilations at MoMA PS1 *No opening reception
Erin O’Brien: Room Tone at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts
AWAI at Seizan
Albert Kotin: Primal Force at Hollis Taggart
Lucas Dupuy: Memory Root at Island
Lafleur & Bogaert in New York at Frosch & Co
Cassidy Argo & Athena Parella: What The House Dreams Of at RUBY/DAKOTA
Nehemiah Cisneros: COLLECTIONS at GR
Nick Hobbs: Nowhere Fast at Scroll
ringl + pit at Robert Mann Gallery
Inertia at 81 Leonard
Pattern in Space at Helm Contemporary
Scott Daniel Ellison: An Oak Tree Hollow at New Discretions
Alejandra Seeber: Loop Hole at Situations
Eny Lee Parker: A Soft Place to Land at Hannah Traore
Jimmy Edgar: Divine Presence at Sitting Room Gallery *6pm - 9pm
The Living Room at Fugue Gallery
INTERCONNECTING LINES at One Art Space *6pm - 9pm
Helena Calmfors: Floral Disciplines at The Untitled Space
Yigal Ozeri: Americana at Ethan Cohen
Andrius Alvarez-Backus & In June Park: ORDINARY IMPERMANENCE at Mama Projects
Haoyun Erin Zhao: Rivers Flow Through Us at Morgan Lehman
Rune Christensen: Collective Memories at Morgan Lehman
Shirin Towfiq: GAUZE at Spill 180
Stanley Whitney & Henri Matisse at Craig Starr *No opening reception
Friday, October 24th
Sam Branden: Alloy at Love’s Club
Susan Hamburger: Near Enemies at Asya Geisberg
John Marin: Communing with the Colossal at Schoelkopf Gallery
Jameson Magrogan: During an Eternity at Rainrain
Julia Kunin: Laughing Castles at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
Benjamin Butler: Water Paintings at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery
Yaron Michael Hakim: Antecedents at Sargent’s Daughters
Aiza Ahmed: The Music Room at Sargent’s Daughters
Threads of Belonging: Ten Emerging Asian Women Artists at Hollis Taggart
Marcin Janusz: Ghosts and Roots at Fierman
Clintel Steed: Different Time Zones Different Dimensions at Shrine
Ben Styer: Little Music Box Stories at Shrine
Andy Warhol: The Dialectical Third: Torso, Sex Parts, Ladies and Gentlemen, Querelle, Self Portraits and other Polaroids at The Hole
Maryam Amiryani: Come to Country at Ulterior
Saturday, October 25th
Juan Pablo Plazas: Breathing Document at Open Source
Geoffrey Johnson Fall: New York As I See It at Hubert *No opening reception
Will Sears: Upon & Within at Massey Klein
Joe Warrior-Walker: Ley Lands at Massey Klein
Dead Skin at Nine *6pm - 9pm
On Kawara: I Am Still Alive at Turquoise
Sophia Chai: MOTHER PHOTOGRAPHY at HAIR+NAILS
VAULT at Kaje *6pm - 9pm
Thieves Like Us at Benny’s Video *4pm - 7pm
Events
Tuesday, October 21st
Book Launch & Talk: Charlie Porter’s Nova Scotia House at Hauser & Wirth
6pm - 8pm
The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History Book Talk with Maggie Gram at Pratt Pfizer Building
6pm - 8pm
Lecture + Discussion with Douglas Rushkoff: Program or Be Programmed at Kai Matsumiya
6pm - 8pm
Phoebe Helander artist lecture at the New York Studio School
6:30pm - 7:30pm
Mary Miss and Bryony Roberts in Conversation at the Cooper Union
6:30pm - 8:30pm
Screening of Computer Vision by Camilo Salas at Minimal Gallery
6:30pm - 8pm
The Image Is Cracked Film Screening curated by Luke Fowler at Light Industry
7pm
Eric Pickersgill Artist Talk at SVA
7pm - 8:30pm
Ancestral Computation film screening at eflux screening room
7pm
SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide publication launch with Cannupa Hanska Luger at Printed Matter
6pm - 8pm
Wednesday, October 22nd
Artist Talk with Tess Martin at Pratt Department of Digital Art
12pm - 2pm
Artist Talk with Liliane Tomasko and Phong H. Bui at Nino Mier Gallery
6pm - 8pm
Carrie Yamaoka Book Launch at Participant
7pm
Kemar Keanu Wynter artist lecture at Hunter College
7pm
On the Path walkthrough and conversation with Sabelo Mlangeni and Dr. Oluremi C. Onabanjo at Amant
7pm - 9pm
Writing Cities reading hosted by Mutt Readings & Eden at TJ Byrnes
7:30pm
Thursday, October 23rd
Artist Talk with Arthur Simms at FIT
2:15pm - 3:15pm
Paul Feeley: The Shape of Things Book Launch at Garth Greenan Gallery
5pm - 7pm
Aaron King Artist Talk at NYU
5:30pm
Martha Rosler in Conversation with Julia Bryan-Wilson at Pratt Navy Yard
6pm - 7:30pm
whisper between two eyes event with Janine Antoni and Daniel Bozhkov at 601 Artspace
6pm - 7:30pm
RSVP to proposals@601Artspace.org
Politics of Migration and Memory in the Americas panel discussion at the National Academy of Design
6pm - 8pm
Books of Remembrance Reading by Ainsley Burrows + DJ Set with CX KidtroniK at the Print Center
6pm - 8pm
Denise Markonish in Conversation with Sameer Farooq and Cassils at The 8th Floor
6pm - 8pm
Mark Borthwick book signing for ‘Out of Date’: Pola Pan 1984–1996 at Dashwood Books
6pm - 8pm
Exhibition Walkthrough: Tony Oursler and Olivia Shao on Voice of Space
6:30pm - 8pm
Minh Nguyen, Memorial Park: Revisiting Vietnam Book Launch Event at eflux screening room
7pm
RSVP via link
Jacky Connolly Lecture “Midnight in the Mineral Kingdom” at Earth
7pm
Artist Talk with Mary Mattingly at Pace University Art Gallery
2pm
Artist & Curator Walkthrough of Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi: Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds at Canal Projects
6:30pm
RSVP via link
Friday, October 24th
The Third Annual Visual AIDS Research Symposium at MoMA
2pm - 6:30pm
Jason Polan: The Post Office Book Launch Event at Printed Matter
5:30pm - 7:30pm
What’s in your Album? with Junghyun Kim, Juyon Lee, and Kai Oh at Baxter Street Camera Club
6pm
Artist Talk with Natale Adgnot at Established Gallery
6pm - 7:30pm
David Szauder: Glitches & Glory Book Presentation & Conversation presented by Elza Kayal Gallery at Clara Aich Studio
6pm - 8pm
RSVP to info@elzakayal.com
Saturday, October 25th
Artist Talk and Book Launch with Nayland Blake at Matthew Marks Gallery
3pm - 5pm
Between Clouds Book Launch at Tappeto Volante Gallery
4pm
Daniel Ambrosi in Conversation with Tim Barringer at Robilant+Voena
4pm - 5pm
RSVP to rsvp@robilantvoena.com
Zach Bruder book launch and signing at Magenta Plains
4pm - 6pm
RSVP to info@magentaplains.com.
Closing reception for Beyond the Bedrock at PS122
5pm - 7pm
Kyiv to LA: Swamps, Steppes, and Souvenirs film screening at eflux screening room
7pm
Artist talk with Marina Berio, Aya Fujioka, and Asa Hiramatsu moderated by Pauline Vermare at Seizan
2pm - 4pm
Sunday, October 26th
Artist Talk with Carter Shocket and Lovisa Axén at Eleventh Hour Art
4pm - 5:30pm
Justine Kurland and Sarah Miller Meigs in Conversation at Printed Matter
4pm - 6pm
If you’d like submit your event to be included in a future newsletter, please fill out this form (or message or email me).
Disclaimer: I try to be as accurate as possible with dates and times that things are happening, but things are subject to change and I am subject to human error so please always check links before venturing out
I like reading the term JOMO! I'll add it to my vocab