5 Standout Shows to See at Small Galleries This August
In this monthly roundup, we shine a spotlight on five stellar exhibitions taking place at small and rising galleries.
A graduate of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, 34-year-old artist Luca Sára Rózsa planted wheatgrass into ceramic sculptures of human heads and hands at Double Q Gallery in Hong Kong. In Christian iconography, the plant is a symbol of resurrection and life. Growing from the sculptures of Rózsa’s installation You Start Where I End (2021), it suggests renewal amid the remnants of a lost civilization.
You Start Where I End is part of Rózsa’s first solo exhibition in Asia, “Five Deep Breaths,” which also features lush paintings portraying nameless, often nude figures. These subjects inhabit paradisiacal landscapes, existing outside hierarchical structures and envisioning a more equitable world. Through their enigmatic activities—like wading through a pond in Stillness of the Forest (My Son, VN) (2024), or collectively carrying a figure through the woods in Leave (Enter) (2024)—they evoke a sense of struggle, survival, and, ultimately, renewal.
Rózsa’s visual style—characterized by vibrant colors, fluid forms, and a dreamlike atmosphere—enhances the sense of a liberated world. Her figures, depicted without distinct identities or status symbols, move freely and harmoniously with nature and each other.
Rózsa’s mysterious work has previously been the subject of solo exhibitions at galleries such as VILTIN Gallery in Budapest and Steve Turner in Los Angeles.
Bay Area painter Andrew Catanese attributes much of their influence to their childhood in the American South. Growing up in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, in the 1990s, Catanese was surrounded by a landscape teeming with both plant and animal life. Now, at Johansson Projects, the artist’s exhibition “These Fields Dream of Fire” memorializes these verdant memories with colorful paintings populated by horses, dogs, trees, foxes, and people.
In In the Blackbird, I Always See Home (2024), three dogs chase a trio of red-winged blackbirds native to Virginia. Meanwhile, in Already the Magnolias Are Falling (2024), Catanese depicts a figure gazing off into a pink-lit horizon, surrounded by the falling leaves of a sweetbay tree, typical of the Virginia coastal plains. The paintings are characterized by Catanese’s expressive brushwork, made up of loose, textural marks that conjure a sense of movement. Ultimately, these paintings appear to offer snapshots of Catanese’s memories, evoking childlike nostalgia.
The 31-year-old artist earned their MFA from Stanford University in 2023. In the past seven years, they have staged six solo exhibitions, including shows at Maune Contemporary in Atlanta and LeMieux in New Orleans.
In the courtyard of Galería Ana Tejeda, 120 machetes hang suspended in the air. This violent rendition of a windchime—a sound sculpture titled Instrumento 2 (2024)—is the cornerstone of Miguel Rodríguez Sepúlveda’s solo exhibition “Do machetes dream?” Including work from 2011 to the present, this exhibition recasts the image of the machete, typically associated with agriculture or war, by creating intricate “crests,” as he calls them, with the blades.
Born in Tampico, Mexico, in 1971 and raised in Cerro Azul, Rodríguez Sepúlveda studied architecture and worked as a professional photographer before beginning his career as a visual artist. The machete is a recurring motif in the artist’s body of work, which often elevates utilitarian materials. Dating back over a decade, one work in the exhibition, Leit Motivs (2013), features 16 machetes arranged in a circle with various Latin phrases cut into them. Through the inclusion of these expressions, including “Consensum Omnium” (“With the approval of everyone”) and “Nihil Admirari” (“To be surprised by nothing”), tools of violence become oracular.
In recent years, Rodríguez Sepúlveda has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the MARCO Museum of Contemporary Art of Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico; Espacio ARRIBA in Mexico City; and Locust Projects in Miami.
A sense of loneliness pervades everyday life in the digital age, which has diverted daily connections to our smartphones. At Simard Bilodeau Contemporary in Los Angeles, six artists, including American painter J. Carino and Vietnamese Canadian artist Tuan Vu, come together to celebrate the intimate, in-person encounters we share with family, romantic partners, and friends. In “Toi Moi Nous,” fleeting moments such as an embrace, a kiss, or eye contact are worth memorializing.
Such moments are captured in splashy color by French artist Anne-Sophie Tschiegg, whose portraits of entwined couples bear the influence of Fauvism, and Emily Wise, whose subjects are pulled together in a pink and purple vortex. In Immersion in the World (2024), Diana Ruban renders an embracing femme couple in vivid cerulean. Elsewhere, contributions from Gabriela Reyna’s “Series El Baño” use the unconventional materials of makeup and makeup wipes to capture the intimacy of shared daily grooming rituals.
Mexican artist Jorge Rosano Gamboa endeavors to visualize several Aztec gods—Xochipilli, Mictlantecuhtli, and Xipe Tótec—in his new paintings at Saenger Galería. This new exhibition, “bulto/niebla/piel,” draws from pre-Columbian art traditions as well as the artist’s Minimalist inspirations. His vibrant palette and hard edges evoke a dialogue between the ancient and the avant-garde as he engages with religious imagery relating to life, death, and rebirth through these deified subjects.
Gamboa’s PIEL/XIPETOTEC A (all works 2024), the first segment of a triptych, reinterprets the god of spring with a blank expression and slits for eyes. Traditionally depicted wearing the skin of human victims, the god appears in subsequent panels, PIEL/XIPETOTEC B and PIEL/XIPETOTEC C, with visible bindings holding together his gruesome garment. Gamboa achieves a fleshy quality through the use of swaths of golden-yellow oil stick on linen, linking his form to his subject.
Gamboa, who currently lives and works in Mexico City, has held solo exhibitions at several local galleries, including laNao, Galería Breve, and Lateral.
