5 Standout Shows to See at Small Galleries This October
In this monthly roundup, we shine a spotlight on five stellar exhibitions taking place at small and rising galleries.
After graduating from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1996, Liz Cohen left to visit her Colombian grandmother in Panama. From 1997 to 1999, Cohen returned to Panama several times, increasingly fascinated by the lives of people in the Panama Canal Zone, particularly the lives of transgender sex workers. These compelling images form her “CANAL” series, now featured for the first time in Panama in her solo exhibition at Diablo Rosso, titled “Avenida de los Mártires.”
At the heart of the “CANAL” series is a body of photographs taken on a night when a Panamanian sex worker named Linette dressed Cohen and brought her out for the night. Many of these images capture Cohen’s personal experience while also portraying the broader narrative of identity, resilience, and struggle faced by transgender individuals in the Panama Canal Zone.
In 2000, Cohen received her MFA in photography from the California College of the Arts. Living and working in her hometown of Phoenix, Cohen teaches at the School of Art at Arizona State University. Her varied practice spans performance, automotive design, and photography, for which she was recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.
Victorien Bazo, “Fragments d’origines : Une odyssée ancestrale”
Bwo Art Gallery, Douala, Cameroon
Through Oct. 26
An MFA graduate from the Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Douala in Cameroon, Victorien Bazo developed his love for art while reading comics and manga at a young age. As he pursued painting, Bazo approached his work like a comic artist, layering his canvases with multiple perspectives and dynamic scenography that drew inspiration from his real life and cultural traditions. These figurative works are the subject of the artist’s solo show “Fragments d’origines: Une odyssée ancestrale,” on view at Bwo Art Gallery in Douala, Cameroon.
One standout piece, Visite et réception chez l’oncle Hemeni (2024), demonstrates Bazo’s graphic storytelling techniques. The painting is made up of panel-type images within a single canvas: A central scene depicts a family dinner, and on either side are two other domestic depictions. The show explores these multifaceted scenes of Cameroonian life, along with symbols of the region’s cultural heritage.
The 37-year-old artist presented his work in a solo exhibition earlier this year at the French Institute of Douala. In 2021, Bazo won the Barthélémy Toguo Prize, which is awarded each year to an emerging young Cameroonian artist.
This month, Simone Haack is giving visitors of Galerie Droste a sneak peek into her dreams. For her first solo exhibition in Paris, “Helix of Realism,” Haack presents her dream notebooks—a practice she began during her studies with Pat Andrea at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris—alongside a selection of new paintings. These notebooks feature written accounts of her dreams and drawings that have influenced her abstract paintings.
Her detailed works all build upon a singular visual motif: hair. Paintings like Waves (4) (all works 2024) resemble flowing strands of brunette and strawberry blond hair, while Blond Birches portrays a densely threaded pattern woven from expanses of curled blond strands. Building on this theme, La Forêt secrète extends these textural explorations into a lush, forested setting where trees and terrain mimic the weight and flow of hair. Here, the world takes on the characteristics of blond tresses, creating a fantastical, ethereal landscape.
Now living in Berlin, Haack has presented solo exhibitions across Germany at leading galleries such as Galerie Moderne Silkeborg in 2024 and Galerie Gebr. Lehmann in Dresden in 2023.
The paintings of Spanish artist Federico Miró at Mexico City’s Proyecto H / Galería Hispánica echo the traditional landscape work of Edo period artists such as Katsushika Hokusai. For his work featured in “Contrast,” Miró combines these classic Japanese landscapes with diverse elements, such as pre-Hispanic Mexican textile patterns and scenes from Madrid’s street markets. For instance, Miró depicts an Edo-esque landscape with trees emerging from the water and a Torii gate in the background for his two-panel painting Untitled (2024). As if creating a cross-cultural collage, he then frames the scene with a black and gray pattern inspired by Mexican textile works.
Now 33, Miró earned a BA in fine arts at the University of Málaga in 2013 and a master’s degree at the Complutense University of Madrid in 2014. His work has been exhibited in solo shows at several Spanish galleries, such as Galería Javier Marín, F2 Galería, and Galería Marta Cervera.
Lucas Recchia, installation view of “Elemental Echoes” at Bossa in New York, 2024. Courtesy of Bossa.
Lucas Recchia, installation view of “Elemental Echoes” at Bossa in New York, 2024. Courtesy of Bossa.
Lucas Recchia makes furniture from broken glass. The 32-year-old Brazilian designer’s innovative approach repurposes these discarded fragments to create the elegant tables of his collection “Caco,” meaning “shard” in Portuguese. It’s a testament to his sustainable philosophy, where “a broken object goes from being to becoming something else,” as he puts it in the exhibition text.
The “Caco” collection is part of Recchia’s New York solo show at Bossa, “Elemental Echoes.” His designs are often inspired by the possibilities of raw materials, such as bronze and natural stones. For instance, his “Janela” collection features a series of tables made from rare Brazilian quartzites, while his “Eche” collection features a sofa, a chaise longue, and an armchair with cast bronze bases. Many of his pieces are “made to order,” as in his “Material Distortion” collection. Here, the artist uses four basic ring shapes in bronze or aluminum to assemble a range of furniture and decorative items, each tailored to the space and preference of his client.
Recchia currently works from his atelier in downtown São Paulo. Since his debut solo show at São Paulo’s Firma Casa in 2018, the artist has presented his work at KURA Arte in São Paulo, Rossana Orlandi in Milan, and Gallery Correctional in Dubai, among others.
