![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/3470855f2e67972ff819547fbb67b626d7-20250723-NYMAG-Karen-Barbour-01-0236.rhorizontal.w1100.jpg\")
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\n On artist Karen Barbour: LORO PIANA Jacket, Pants, and Flats, available at select boutiques. BVLGARI Necklace, Bracelet, and Rings, at bulgari.com.
\n Photo: Jay Kolsch\n <\/p>\n
Some paint ghosts. One sculpts with hair. Another is late 60s and one of the more intriguing \u201cnew\u201d talents around. All six are positioned for career-making openings in September. In these artists\u2019 hands, figuration isn\u2019t a retreat but an insurgency. It isn\u2019t nostalgic or safe or optically rote. It\u2019s personal, political, pictorially alive, pushing against the flatness of photo-based realism and ultra-on-message art. Some of these artists I\u2019ve followed for years; others are new to me. But each delivers that jolt of recognition. Karen Barbour makes abstract dot-filled dreamscapes that hover between the psychedelic and the childlike. Mar\u00eda Berr\u00edo\u2019s collaged visions are both intricate and otherworldly, dreamed then chiseled. Ana Cl\u00e1udia Almeida paints with spectral precision; colors blur, as if you\u2019re seeing underwater. Adebunmi Gbadebo works with human hair, indigo dye, and timeless forms to sculpt memory and Black history, materializing grief and resilience in equal measure. Sasha Gordon\u2019s lush self-portraits are charged with vengeance and vulnerability. Her maniacal technique ravishes. Olivia van Kuiken paints slouched angels, stoned odalisques, girls with deadpan gazes who seem to see something we don\u2019t. That\u2019s true of all emerging artists: They sketch the shape of what\u2019s coming next. Not fully known, already felt. Their work can shift the chemistry of a room and, sometimes, of art itself. \u2014 Jerry Saltz<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been free all these years to do what I want. I was an illustrator; I don\u2019t think I was very good at it, but I made a living doing that. I painted from the time I was in my 20s, but I didn\u2019t want to talk about it too much. It wasn\u2019t how I made my living, so it wasn\u2019t real. This moment in my career \u2014 I\u2019m glad. But I\u2019m still in my own world, really. I started a lot of these canvases decades ago. There\u2019s one from 1985 or 1986 that\u2019s had a million different stages. Most recently, my dad was dying, and I started adding to it again. He was hallucinating, and he was an extremely curious and smart person, so for him the hallucinations were exciting. There\u2019s a face in the painting of an old-fashioned man I imagined him seeing. I never expected Peter, my curator, to pick it out for the show. To me, it was this bedraggled thing that\u2019s been evolving since the \u201980s, something I did for myself.\u201d \u2014 As told to Emma Alpern<\/p>\n
\u201cBrainwaves and Wavestorms<\/a>\u201d at Harkawik, September 5 through October 2.<\/p>\n \n GABRIELA HEARST Dress, at gabrielahearst.com. BVLGARI Earrings, Necklace, Bracelet, and Rings. \u201cPainting has gotten so flat, and I wanted to push against that. I wanted the show to have a very punk attitude. There\u2019s a lot of paint that\u2019s thrown around and sculpted. I mixed wax in with the oil paint, which made it a superheavy body. Most of the paintings are freestanding, which has been an experiment, but they look strong \u2014 physically strong. They\u2019re snapshots of figures moving in space, very Eadweard Muybridge. I\u2019ve made a lot of works using those figures as references, but this time I started collaging them and making the bodies foreshortened or pushing them together in subtle ways. I wanted to make it clear in the paintings that they weren\u2019t actual people, that the body was more of a screen for the viewer\u2019s projection. My other shows have been based on books, referencing specific characters or passages or ideas. This show felt like it was falling out of me.\u201d \u2014 As told to Paula Aceves<\/p>\n \u201cBastard Rhyme\u201d at Matthew Brown<\/a>, September 5 through October 18.<\/p>\n \n PLEATS PLEASE ISSEY MIYAKE dress, at us.isseymiyake.com. BVLGARI earrings, necklace, and necklace worn as bracelet. \u201cThis is the biggest space I\u2019ve shown in, so I was like, Let me do the most ambitious thing I can do. I\u2019ve been working on it for over a year. I wanted a cohesive narrative around one painting that\u2019s about the relationship I have with myself, how weird it feels to have all these facets that maybe don\u2019t match. There\u2019s one protagonist and three evil women, a trope in horror and revenge movies I wanted to play into. The first painting is based on a scene in The Host that spoke to me when I was 10. A monster is running around a city, and a woman is fiddling with her fingernails in a park. She is so distracted that the monster runs right through her. In the painting, the woman is cutting her toenails, her headphones are on, and there\u2019s an explosion. The whole city is in chaos, but she\u2019s just going to take her time and do her nails first. She is fixated on herself and her priorities.\u201d \u2014 P.A.<\/p>\n \u201cHaze<\/a>\u201d at David Zwirner, September 10 through October 18.<\/p>\n \n CHRISTOPHER JOHN ROGERS Shirt and Trouser, at christopherjohnrogers.com. LOEWE Pump, at loewe.com. BVLGARI Necklace, Bracelets, and Rings. \u201cThe first step of my process is a 13-hour road trip to South Carolina. I drive into Fort Motte, to the plantation where my ancestors were enslaved, and dig about a couple hundred pounds of soil and bring it back to my studio. I then have to turn that soil into clay, which is a laborious process of sifting out all these natural elements like rocks and pine needles or broken glass that people have laid in the cemetery. I got the soil for these pieces in July 2024. This has definitely been the longest I\u2019ve worked toward a show. The nature of my materials, their fragility and limitations, is a challenge: I\u2019m using soil that\u2019s dug, that\u2019s not necessarily meant to be clay. I use human hair. I had a piece that was complete, ready to be shipped, and as I was sweeping I knocked it over. For artists who work in ceramics, work breaking is just a part of the game. Ceramics are so fragile that seeing work leave my studio for installation is like an exhale.\u201d \u2014 E.A.<\/p>\n \u201cWatch Out for the Ghosts<\/a>\u201d at Nicola Vassell, September 4 through October 18.<\/p>\n \n BVLGARI Bracelets. \n PROENZA SCHOULER top, skirt, and flats, at proenzaschouler.com. BVLGARI necklace and rings. \u201cI think I have over 10,000 papers. I could open a store in the studio. To prepare for a show, I gather all the papers I\u2019m excited to use and throw them on the ground and start to get them ready. I\u2019ve created this technique I call \u2018paper painting,\u2019 where I collage using Japanese papers and paint on the collage using watercolors. And more recently, I\u2019ve worked with a contemporary-dance company, photographing and creating a small performance with them, which I then paint. It\u2019s a very intuitive process. The first piece I made for the show, called Soliloquy of the Wounded Earth, is a woman who\u2019s very mysterious on a horse but projects this feeling of hope and courage that guided me through the making of the other works. It came to me immediately, and I resolved it very fast. Sometimes you\u2019re surprised with these pieces that come so fast, but they take your fear away. They lead the way.\u201d \u2014 E.A.<\/p>\n \u201cSoliloquy of the Wounded Earth<\/a>\u201d at Hauser & Wirth, September 4 through October 18.<\/p>\n \n ALTUZARRA Dress, at altuzarra.com. BVLGARI Watch, Bracelets, and Ring. \u201cIt all started with one very, very large-scale oil painting. I was mostly thinking about the movements of a waterfall, but there were a few different cultural references that influenced me. One was a song by the Brazilian singer Tim Maia, and another was Black Orpheus, which offers a very stereotypical idea of Rio, where I\u2019m from. There is a big party scene, and it\u2019s very lively, but the presence of death is everywhere. As I saw this duality in the movie, I began to see the same duality in the canvas. With this show, I was more intentional about the freedom to play. I have some transfers, some oil-pastel drawings, monotypes, and installation work. And I work a little bit on one, a little bit on the other, and things keep influencing each other. One work changes how I see the other. What is in the palette of one goes to the palette of the other. Because of the first work, all the paintings include movement of some kind, like a force falling.\u201d \u2014 P.A.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/b658a94079532cb59812c97df749235581-20250723-NYMAG-Olivia-Van-Kuiken-01-0635.w710.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Jay Kolsch\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/132554fc002dee8ae78265e09edf86b1ec-20250723-MYMAG-Sasha-Gordon-01-0009.w710.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Jay Kolsch\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/fecf48aa0f7bd234f39f69365e233d1d31-20250723-NYMAG-Adebunmi-Gbadebo-03-1354.w710.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Jay Kolsch\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/23d0cca7a712cd198a9eb8c24e8e76e6f2-20250723-NYMAG-Adebunmi-Gbadebo-02-0715.w710.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Jay Kolsch\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/d924021d0c3ca2f096d8d23a21f165a59e-20250723-NYMAG-Maria-Berriio-01-0357.w710.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Jay Kolsch\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/fb2b76a8cf1c3b2908ba93a505e3dd8ebe-20250723-NYMAG-Ana-Claudia-01-1107.w710.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Jay Kolsch\n <\/p>\n