It’s September; there’s a slight chill in the air today anyway, and as fall is coming towards us, I have been going to as many art shows as I can.
Alix Vernet’s work is large reclaimed sections of the air vent, a new form of found sculpture, which she discovered after working on the fire escape for long periods. She became connected with this piece of the city, often forgotten but always needed. Vernet imprints letters into the AC vent, like the first three letters from welcome. Her sculptures feel weighty and dynamic, like an early Richard Serra. My absolute favorite from this collection is Almost Night, Almost Baby, which you have to walk around to see in its eternity. Her collection feels like one of the most interesting series of works by a female artist in sculpture, bringing text, sculpture and gender norms through within her work. Vernet’s leaves us wanting more, as the whole world is often not captured, just begun.
Alix Vernet LANDMARKS, September 9th – October 17th, 2026, Chapter NY
Rhizomes’ WEBSITES WEBSITES WEBSITES!
The Last Acres of the Internet:view HERE
Rhizomes’ WEBSITES WEBSITES WEBSITES! plays with the idea of what a website can be. They selected pieces created throughout the past 30 years and displayed them on all types of screens, projections, old desktops, and new touchscreens. One of the curators told me they intended to both explore what the internet was and what it is now through collections of games discussing AI, or watching others play games. Rhizome tries to draw in a new crowd to internet art as it evolves in the age of ai and the increase in its importance over time.
A particularly strong work from Websites Websites Websites ! was The Last Acres of the Internet, created by exonemo, who, like Rhizome, was celebrating 30 years of collaboration as an artist duo (formed by Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa). “The Last Acres of the Internet offers the web’s least desirable real estate for sale”, meaning it has an incredibly long HTTP, a low-value ‘space’ on the internet. The website is a beautifully coded map of the world, where you can fly around. The duo sold their landing page, or ‘digital land’, at a starting point of 24 dollars at Rhizome’s auction on Wednesday night. The same price Manhattan was sold to the Dutch for. Their work and the foundation: At their auction, they had high-energy interactive elements, such as roulette, as well as their own form of money, games and a dance party to finish; it was all in the spirit of all Rhizome has accomplished over the last thirty years.
Rhizomes’ WEBSITES WEBSITES WEBSITES! September 21st- 27th at New Int. Picture Company
The Armory Show, 2026
The Armory Show was a strong display of various themes, including decolonization, environmentalism, and materiality. Held at the Javits Center in New York, the fair featured 240 galleries, including many presentations across Solo, Focus, and Platform. Armory’s Platform section, curated by SculptureCenter curator Jovanna Venegas, was by far the curatorial highlight from the organization’s side. Being able to engage with the work of Hew Locke after his recent solo exhibition, as well as Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, was special. The other major highlight was seeing so many new galleries and artists at Armory.
As Armory continues to expand, more emerging galleries get to join the fair as it evolves into a more global model. At Armory, we were able to see Latin American art take center stage. Studio Lenca at Kate Ferri Projects (booth P15) was a true highlight. Studio Lenca created a contraption where you could roll a quarter down his painting. Furthermore, the fair featured established artists such as Tracey Emin, Farzad Kohan, and many others.
Perrotin featured Kathia St. Hilaire in a solo presentation at booth 100. The duality between the climate of silence around the forgotten history of Haiti and the violence of the Haitian state is felt in her works. Her work honors her Haitian roots and stood out as a reflection on the literary movement Spiralism, while being visually sumptuous in its yellows and greens.
Another interesting emerging gallery was Wolfgang Gallery, based in Atlanta, at booth P26. They showed a series of works by Jacob Todd Broussard, including Baby You Fear the Wrong Thing (After FB) 1. His series of paintings plays with color and canvas — what should be seen and what should not. Broussard is constantly rubbing down what he has placed on the canvas. The pool in the series of images is implied, with other elements added into the triptych. The glow of the orange neon light in the third canvas makes you question whether it is really set at a pool. The figures, some nude and some clothed, strut awkwardly across the canvas in a way that implies intimacy. His other pieces, namely unseemly desire, imply that his desire is plaguing him and has found its way onto the canvas.
Spinello Gallery showed an engaging series of works by the artistic duo Elliot and Erick Jiménez, who are both twins and creative partners. Their exploration of Afro-Cuban mysticism through their photographs feels deeply surreal. These images feel beyond the reach of a photograph, in part because of their color choice; see The Cord Between Us, where the foreground sinks into the background through the use of contrast. Through the medium of printing on a photo rag, you see the colors seeping into the cotton weave. Their works play with dimensionality by including vintage found 19th-century glass eyes, haunting and ever-present; it reminds me of the eyes of the art world. After all was seen and heard in the Armory this fall, what was truly most exciting about the fair was the variety of work in New York this week and the knowledge that there is more to come.
The Armory Show 2026, September 24th–27th, 2026 Javits Center
