The fall art season is traditionally the most dynamic period in the art world calendar, as galleries, museums, art fairs, and auction houses resume full operations after the summer break. From Paris to London to New York, prominent collectors, curators, advisors, and gallerists are closely monitoring which artists will define the upcoming months. This fall presents particularly exciting opportunities for eight artists who are reaching pivotal moments in their careers, whether through debuts with major galleries, first solo exhibitions in key markets, or significant institutional presentations.
Spanish artist Teresa Solar Abboud, born in Madrid in 1985, is experiencing unprecedented attention this fall. She has recently secured representation by blue-chip gallery Lehmann Maupin in collaboration with Travesia Cuatro, marking a significant step forward in her career. Additionally, Abboud has announced a monumental new sculpture titled "Mother Tongue" (2025) that will be presented during Frieze Week in London at the Hayward Gallery. This piece represents her first work in bronze and her debut with a major U.K. public institution. Later this fall, she will mount her first solo presentation in Germany at Kunstverein Hannover, with her inaugural solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin scheduled for September 2026.
Abboud is best known for her large-scale sculptures crafted in clay and finished with polished resin, which explore the relationship between humanity and the Earth's outer crust. Her works feature organic forms in vibrant colors, with rough textures contrasting against smooth, propeller-like pastel shapes. This recognition follows several major institutional moments, including her participation in the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and solo presentations at Museo CA2M in Madrid and Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona in 2024. Last year, her major sculpture "Birth of Islands" (2024) was commissioned for New York's High Line.
Brazilian artist Ana Cláudia Almeida, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1993 and now based in Brooklyn, is making her New York debut with "Over Again," her first major solo exhibition in the city and first show with Stephen Friedman Gallery since joining their roster. Running through October 18th, the exhibition features new fabric works, large-scale paintings, and a site-specific installation that engages various media including plastic, oil pastels, and video. Almeida's work blends abstraction and materiality, with paintings on fabric and plastic freed from traditional stretchers and contorted around gallery columns or suspended from the ceiling.
Her artistic approach varies dramatically within individual works, sometimes featuring expansive brushstrokes of vivid color that fill entire canvases with thick paint layers, while other times leaving vast areas bare except for strategic marks. This experimental approach signals the importance of breaking from tradition and abandoning patterns that no longer serve contemporary needs. Earlier this year, Almeida received her MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University's School of Art, complementing her BA from Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro.
Multidisciplinary artist Sonia Boyce, born in London in 1962, has spent over four decades creating groundbreaking improvisational performance and visual work exploring voice and identity. As part of the early 1980s Black British Arts Movement, she became the first Black British artist included in the Tate's collection by 1987. However, she is only now receiving full recognition for her contributions. Hauser & Wirth, which announced representation of Boyce in 2023, presents her first solo show with the gallery, "Improvise with what we have," running through October 18th in New York.
Boyce gained international prominence when she became the first Black British woman to represent Britain at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 with "Feeling Her Way," an immersive installation and video work that won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Her current exhibition presents photographic and wallpaper works alongside two new films. "Silent Disco" (2025) examines collective performance through close listening and improvised movements at silent discos, with still images from the film rearranged into kaleidoscopic wallpaper installations. Meanwhile, "Carmen" (2025) observes the life and legacy of Guyanese British actress Carmen Munroe through split-screen video feeds.
Acclaimed Chinese abstractionist Ding Yi, born in Shanghai in 1962, is known for his signature cross motifs that appear throughout his four-decade career. Initially using this symbol without narrative intent, focusing instead on rigorous repetition, Yi's practice has evolved to investigate the cosmos, nature, and the universe. His spiritual works are now featured in "The Road to Heaven," his inaugural London exhibition at Lisson Gallery, which announced representation of the artist last year while he continues with ShanghART, Galerie Karsten Greve, Timothy Taylor, and Galería RGR.
"The Road to Heaven" responds to three intensive years Yi spent researching ancient Dongba faith scrolls from southwestern China. These manuscripts depict soul transportation into the afterlife through pictographs. Yi's new works, created on coarse-fibered Dongba paper with acrylic and colored pencil, reinterpret the most significant of these ancient scripts, bridging contemporary abstraction with spiritual tradition.
Sasha Gordon, born in Somers, New York in 1998, shot to prominence following her debut solo museum presentation "Surrogate Self" at ICA Miami during Miami Art Week in 2023. An alumna of The Artsy Vanguard 2022, that exhibition caught the attention of David Zwirner, which now co-represents the artist alongside Matthew Brown. Later this month, David Zwirner's New York space will present Gordon's first solo exhibition with the gallery, "Haze," featuring entirely new work.
Gordon's technical skill and narrative ability are evident in her gauzy, life-like oil paintings that employ her own image as various alter egos to communicate inner turmoil in horror-film fashion. A 2020 Rhode Island School of Design graduate, she is the youngest artist signed to Zwirner's roster, bypassing traditional career stepping stones as mega-galleries compete to sign emerging talent. Her work is held in prominent collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Hammer Museum.
Korean American abstract painter Suzanne Song, born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1974 and based in New York, has widely exhibited her geometric compositions across the United States and South Korea. Her first blue-chip gallery solo exhibition opens this fall at White Cube in London, featuring "Interfold," a new body of over 20 canvases presented as part of "Inside the White Cube," the gallery's series platforming rising artists. The exhibition runs through October 3rd at their Masons Yard location, joining past featured artists including Alex Da Corte, Etel Adnan, and Senga Nengudi.
Song's layered approach and line-based arrangements draw from Minimalism and Op Art to create dizzying illusions in restrained color palettes. She achieves these disorienting effects through meticulous advance planning using paper cut-outs or digital tools to ensure geometric harmony. Song received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University's School of Art in 2000 and has previously exhibited at spaces including the Drawing Center, Doosan Art Center, and Gallery Baton.
Indigenous Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson, born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1979 and working between northern Minnesota and Chicago, creates sweeping multi-paneled tableaux that reference classic American landscape painting while presenting a radically different vision. Her works feature mountain peaks, endless skies, and coniferous trees, but depict chaotic, thrashed, futuristic views of her ancestral homeland on the Grand Portage Band in northern Minnesota. Her painting "The Buffet" (2025) envisions meteoric impact aftermath with a colorful table at its center.
This work, along with eight smaller paintings, one sculpture, and another multi-paneled piece, is on view through October 25th at Jessica Silverman gallery, which announced representation of the artist earlier this month. Simultaneously, Carlson will be the subject of a major mid-career survey at the Denver Art Museum opening October 5th, plus a solo show with the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art running until early next year. She recently received the 2024 Creative Capital Award and co-founded the Center For Native Futures, an all-Indigenous artist-led nonprofit promoting Indigenous fine arts.
Gabrielle Garland, born in New York in 1968, creates quirky paintings featuring contorted suburban homes that, despite containing no human figures, pulse with personality. These works are displayed through October 25th at Miles McEnery Gallery in "I'll Get You, My Pretty, and Your Little Dog Too," her first solo exhibition with the gallery since joining their roster and her first in New York. Garland's buildings appear almost humanized, with windows and doors loosely suggesting faces, rendered with warped perspective and color bursts that seem hazily recalled from dreams.
In works like "I'm glad he's single because I'm going to climb that like a tree.Megan, Bridesmaids (2011)" (2024), fireworks burst over homes with icicle-dotted roofs, while other pieces feature Concorde airplanes overhead and pelicans investigating driveways. Garland holds an MFA from the University of Chicago and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, having exhibited extensively in Chicago galleries and more recently at fairs including The Armory Show, NADA Miami, EXPO Chicago, and Intersect Aspen Art Fair.
