The Armory Show 2025 opened with a renewed sense of purpose, marking the arrival of New York’s fall art season with a fair that feels less like spectacle and more like a global conversation. Over 230 galleries from more than 30 countries converge at the Javits Center. The fair was divided into seven sections: Galleries, Solos, Focus, focusing on artists and galleries from the American South, Function, a new section for 2025 curated by Ebony L. Haynes which explores the intersection of art and design, Presents, spotlighting emerging galleries no more than ten years old, Platform, showcasing large scale sculpture and installations, and Not-For-Profit.
William Brickel × Michael Kohn Gallery
British artist William Brickel’s artwork has been identified as Mannerist by his use of exaggerated figures. Besides the 16th century feel, Brickel takes inspiration from other British painters like the Pre-Raphaelites and William Blake (The Kohn Gallery). His painting Rude Mechanicals evoked both a sense of bleakness and sensibility. He depicted topless and seemingly blind men in nature during the night. Yet their mien suggested a sense of intellect and discernment. The absence of visible eyes was powerful: although the figures seem to be concentratedly analyzing something external, the unseen gaze suggested an inward turn, as if they are exploring their own minds and their psyches. The contrast between the men’s light skin tone and the dark night echoed the tension the painting holds.
William Brickel – Rude Mechanicals (2025)
Samuel Olayombo × Richard Beavers Gallery
Nigerian artist’s, Samuel Olayombo, portrait of a black man with a white cowboy hat in a pink coat appeared to challenge conventions of gender and culture. The palpable layering of the figure’s face suggested a sense of ruggedness and toughness.
Samuel Olayombo – Paul Harry (2025)
Chaz Guest × SLAG&RX
Los Angeles–based Chaz Guest imbued his solo booth with truth and depth. “I want to paint the color of humanity,” he has said. The figures in his paintings felt deeply human, as though marked by experience and suffering. They carried an unmistakable weight of struggle, yet they also embodied resilience, faith, and a spirited strength — qualities that spoke powerfully to the Black experience. Already well established in the art world, Guest counts among his collectors figures such as President Barack Obama.
Chaz Guest- Little Girl with Cone (2025)
Anthony Goicolea × Galerie Ron Mandos
In contrast to Guest, Cuban-American artist, Anthony Goicolea, rendered scenes that appeal to sublimity. The figures illuminated by the spotlight almost created an image of a halo around them. There was a sense of beauty and divinity to his figures. Bold and loud did the chorists sing, looking up, into the audience, into the future that is brighter and daring to dream big.
Anthony Goicolea- Chorus (2025)
Nick Farhi × Europa
In the Presents sector for emerging galleries, New Yorker Nick Farhi’s Dancing with Tigers evoked a feeling of American nostalgia. His paintings carried a cinematic quality, evoking the atmosphere of a film still. Farhi captured wobbly moments – like a man leaning back indulging in his pizza- hence creating a blurry and misty feel. The painting recalled nights out that are hard to remember: snapshots that remain a blurry memory. The style of figures and the cars evoked a different era, perhaps the 1980s. His paintings included a lot of “Americana” urban settings, like diners, pizza takeaways, suggesting a romanticisation of that period. Furthmore, they captured scenes in motion that are frozen in time.
Nick Farhi – Dancing with Tigers (2025)
Nathalia Edenmont × Wetterling Gallery
Swedish-Ukrainian artist Nathalia Edenmont presented her Out of the Open Wound egg. The contrast between the solidness of the material (Carrara marble) and the instability of what it is supposed to represent (the egg shells) created deeper meaning to the art work. The subject of the eggshells explored themes such as vulnerability and fragility but also of life, death and rebirth. The cracking of the egg suggested a little oviparous animal is born. Edenmont highlighted universality of the eternal cycle through the use of the material, clear and white marble. She noted that this type of clear marble comes geologically from the deepest of the ocean but now rests on earth’s surface in her artwork.
Nathalia Edenmont – Out of the Open Wound (2025)
Tesfaye Urgessa × Saatchi Yates
Fresh from presenting his work at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Tesfaye Urgessa brought a confident presence to the Armory Show 2025. His style could be described as Cubist, marked by a stark and raw visual language. Urgessa demonstrated a sustained engagement with figurative painting, in which human figures often assume animal-like qualities.
Tesfaye Urgessa- The Market (2025)
Gerhardt Liebmann x Gratin
Gerhardt Liebmann’s Two Roofs–Two Chairs (1977), an acrylic on canvas, reduced architecture and furniture to stark emblems: two pitched roofs with two chairs. The painting created a feeling of loneliness and nihilism.
Gerhardt Liebmann – Two Roofs–Two Chairs (1977)
Stephen Pace × Altman Siegel
In Two Black Swans (1982), Stephen Pace summed up his Abstract Expressionistic style into a work that felt both meditative and electric. The two mirroring black swans looked almost arrogantly to opposing sides, vigilant of anyone, asserting dominance of their space. Thick green brushstrokes marked the background with a sense of urgency and elegance, reminiscent of Picasso.
Stephen Pace – Two Black Swans (1982)
Angelo Vasta x Rebecca Camacho
At the Armory Show, Rebecca Camacho spotlighted Angelo Vasta’s bold figurative painting where four interlocking bodies twist and balance in rhythmic unison
Angelo Vasta – Untitled (2025)
Katharina Arndt x Ting Ting Art Space
Katharina Arndt’s beach scene at Ting Ting Art Space depicted suntanned bodies, cigarettes and vibrant unnatural colors mocking consumerism and the digital age.
Katharina Arndt – Barcelonetta Beach (1981)
Moisés Yagües × Ting Ting Art Space
At Ting Ting Art Space, Moisés Yagües used quirky and absurd figures that painted themselves a space within the painting. A sense of humor and irony permeated the painting.
Moisés Yagües – Mondrian’s Assistants (1972)
Rodrigo Hernández × Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
In My waiting for love’s order (2025), Hernández transformed hand-hammered brass into a luminous, nearly cinematic relief stretched across a generous horizontal span.
Rodrigo Hernández – My waiting for love’s order (2025)
Vik Muniz × Ben Brown Fine Arts
Vik Muniz reimagined the Brooklyn Bridge as a shimmering mosaic of collective memory in Brooklyn Bridge (Postcards from Nowhere). Built from countless cut-and-collaged postcards, the image pulsed with layered nostalgia—each fragment a personal fragment of travel, tourism, or distant longing.
Vik Muniz- Brooklyn Bridge (Postcards from Nowhere) (2015)
Jammie Holmes x Marianne Boesky Gallery
In A Few Great Men, Holmes presented Black figures that seem to emerge vividly from the canvas, adorned with golden rings and layered with further black imagery. Their styling carried an air of defiance, evoking associations with street culture. At the same time, the work reflected on Black heritage, while the title conveyed a sense of dignity and pride.
Jammie Holmes – A Few Great Men (2024)
Jacqueline Surdell x Secrist Beach
Jacqueline Surdell’s Suddenly, she was hell-bent and ravenous (after Giotto) (2024) dominated the booth like a tempest held in tapestry. This 14-foot woven wall sculpture — a colossal reimagining of Giotto’s Last Judgment spun from nautical rope and torn fabrics — exploded in aggressive cobalt blues and searing reds.
Jacqueline Surdell’s – Suddenly, she was hell-bent and ravenous (2024)
Giotto- Last Judgement (1305)
Esiri Erheriene- Essi x Galerie Ron Mandos
Esiri Erheriene-Essi’s Only You and You Alone used vibrant colors to convey convivial day-to-day scenes. The work’s sense of sparkle evoked a sense of joy and passion in the viewer.
Esiri Erheriene-Essi – Only You and You Alone (2025)
Mia Chaplin x Whatiftheworld
South African painter Mia Chaplin filled her Focus booth with a subdued, intimate energy, exemplified by a domestic scene rendered in muted pastels and earthy tones. There was a sense of merging of the figures in this vast painting. She used rich impasto surfaces and visible brushwork. Her intuitive brushstrokes suggest a sense of seductivness.
Mia Chaplin – Milk and Honey, Silk and Money, 2025
Marlon Portales x Spinello Projects
Marlon Portales’s canvas at Spinello Projects glowed like a desert vision. His piece was luminous, radiant and full of beauty.
Marlon Portales – Wild Nature (2025)
on Monday, September 8th, 2025 at 7:01 pm and is filed under AO On Site, Art Fair, Art News, Show.
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