11 Artists Having a Major Moment This Fall

Each fall, as the art fair season resurges and galleries open ambitious new shows, a fresh cohort of burgeoning talent captures the art world’s attention. This season is no different, as many artists that have recently joined gallery rosters present debut solo shows, and many others mount new bodies of work to go on view at international fairs, including The Armory Show, Frieze Seoul, and Frieze London.

Here, we share 11 such artists who we’ll be watching this fall.

Woo Hannah

B. 1988, Daejeon, South Korea. Lives and works in Seoul.

Following her solo presentation at Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street space in London this spring, the Korean fiber artist Woo Hannah is set to have another major Frieze moment. She is the recipient of Frieze Seoul’s inaugural Artist Award and will present her winning commission, The Great Ballroom (2023), at the September fair, where she will also be featured in a solo booth with G Gallery.

The Great Ballroom continues “Milk and Honey,” Woo’s ongoing series featuring ornately draped swaths of fabric suspended from the ceiling. Like much of Woo’s work, this installation evokes the body with an intriguing combination of reverence and playfulness: The contours of the fabric suggest breasts, while brightly colored soft-sculpture baubles evoke dribbles of milk. Drawing inspiration from Rococo paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and the like, Woo employs luxe, satiny material and decorative shirring that calls attention to its own beauty. In this work, Woo, preoccupied with ideas of aging and bodily transformation, invites viewers to question why the ridged layers of shirred fabric are widely seen as beautiful, while wrinkled skin is not.

Since completing her MFA at Korea National University of Arts in 2016, Woo has exhibited primarily in Seoul, including solo outings at G Gallery and Art Space BOAN earlier this year. In the spotlight at Frieze, she will be exposed to a wider international audience.

—Olivia Horn

Keiran Brennan Hinton

B. 1992, Toronto. Lives and works in New York and Elgin, Canada.

Keiran Brennan Hinton is firmly on the radar this fall. The Canadian artist presents a solo exhibition, “A Break in the Clouds” (September 8th–October 21st), at New York’s Charles Moffett, his first since the gallery started representing him last year. The artist’s dazzling paintings, produced en plein air, are becoming increasingly known to the international art world—his sold-out solo booth with Charles Moffett was a highlight of Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles in February; and he had 2022 solo shows at Tokyo’s Maki Gallery and Montreal’s Galerie Nicolas Robert. Plus, a large new painting of a sun-dappled living room was a focal point of Charles Moffett’s NADA New York booth this past May.

Brennan Hinton’s practice might be described as mining the beauty from the mundane. A true plein air painter, he is known to travel with paints in tow, at the ready to capture a lush patch of forest, a moonlit lake, or an unremarkable bedside table—and all with equal intensity. Across these slices of everyday life that Brennan Hinton preserves, there’s a distinctive flair for capturing light and, seemingly, slowing down time. Within these works we can see glimpses of (or perhaps tributes to) the forebears that inspire his practice, including Pierre Bonnard, Ann Craven, Lois Dodd, and David Hockney, among others.

This new show comes on the heels of Brennan Hinton’s participation in the Beecher Residency—the esteemed artist residency program established by collectors John Auerbach and Ed Tang that is known to nurture rising talent.

—Casey Lesser

Laetitia Yhap

B. 1941, London. Lives and works in Hastings, England.

Since the 1970s, Laetitia Yhap has painted scenes of the local fishing community in Hastings, on the southeast coast of England. Having moved to the coastal town from London in the 1960s, Yhap found inspiration in the industry of her new home, particularly in the way it has shifted over the course of her practice from traditional fishing tools, such as wooden boats, to modern alternatives, such as steel. Her canvases, which often take unconventional shapes suggestive of furniture paneling, depict unvarnished scenes of everyday industry in intimate, thoughtful depictions of the men and boys for whom the area is a hub of work and socializing.

Throughout her long career, Yhap’s work has been exhibited at U.K. institutions including the Serpentine, Hayward Gallery, and Whitechapel Gallery, and is also in the collection of the Tate, among others. Yet this fall marks a new direction for the 82-year-old artist, who recently announced representation with Hales Gallery in London, where her first solo exhibition at the gallery, “Keeping Company,” opens on September 2nd. This debut exhibition at the gallery will focus on hand-crafted panel paintings from the 1980s and ’90s, such as the painting that titles the show, an almost fresco-style large-scale narrative scene. It’s a scene of amicable quiet, with several men gathered around a fishing boat against a white-clouded sky—either engaged in work, or just idle thought. Yhap’s work will also be featured in Hales’s booth at Frieze London later this year.

—Josie Thaddeus-Johns

Marina Rheingantz

B. 1983, Araraquara, Brazil. Lives and works in São Paulo.

Marina Rheingantz is set to mark her solo show debut in the U.K. with a prime slot at White Cube in Mason’s Yard during the course of London’s Frieze Week. “Maré,” which runs from October 10th through November 11th, caps a remarkable rise for the Brazilian artist, who was signed to the mega-gallery’s roster in August.

Rheingantz works with a variety of media, including paintings and tapestries, to evoke ambiguous, semi-abstract images of sea cliffs, bodies of water, mountain regions, and arid wastelands. Her paintings are often inspired by her childhood memories of growing up in rural Brazil, where she would often travel across the country and study the landscape. Dense with paint and often expansive in scale, these works are characterized by their rich surface texture and dissolution of image, reminiscent of Cy Twombly’s distinctive markmaking. In another series of smaller-scale tapestries, shown as part of “Sedimentar” at Fortes d’Aloia & Gabriel last year, she turns those brushstrokes into rhythmic stitches, scattered across an embroidered canvas.

Rheingantz studied fine arts at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado in São Paulo. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums around the world, including the Museu Serralves in Porto, Portugal; the Taguchi Art Collection in Tokyo; the Pinacoteca de São Paulo; and the MAM Rio in Rio de Janeiro. In 2021, the artist had solo shows with Bortolami, FRAC Auvergne, and Zeno X Gallery. Recent collector demand for the artist’s work had reached new heights with the auction of Paisagem que Anda (2013), which sold for $107,950 at Sotheby’s in March.

—Arun Kakar

Modupeola Fadugba

B. 1985 in Lomé, Togo. Lives and works in Philadelphia and Abuja, Nigeria.

Combining social practice with painting and drawing, Modupeola Fadugba’s arresting work wades into the complex cultural history of the swimming pool, plumbing its symbolism through the lens of different generations and geographies. The Togo-born artist has collaborated with the Harlem Honeys and Bears (a synchronized swim team for older adults), as well as younger swimmers in Nigeria, to create elegant renderings of bodies in water using acrylic, graphite, gold leaf, and burning techniques. The individual identities of her swimmers are often obscured, underscoring ideas of collectivity and cooperation.

Fadugba will exhibit a selection of these works in a solo presentation with Lagos’s kó at The Armory Show this month—a new highlight in her ongoing study of the pool. The subject has fueled her practice for many years: It took center stage in solo shows at Ed Cross Fine Art in London (2017) and Gallery 1957 in Accra (2018). More recently, Fadugba exhibited work from the “Synchronized Swimmers” series at this year’s Dallas Art Fair.

—O.H.

mosie romney

B. 1994, New York. Lives and works in New York.

This fall will bring mosie romney’s first solo show with P.P.O.W, which announced representation of the artist in May of this year. Known for painting complex imaginary spaces that hover between figuration and abstraction, romney creates an immersive dialogue between reality and fantasy that challenges conventional understandings of time, memory, and self-perception. Utilizing their background in set design and puppetry to produce a unique painting style, romney masterfully orchestrates visual realms that invite viewers to rethink their emotional and cognitive boundaries.

In their upcoming solo show, titled “Rhizome St. / Fugue Avenue,” the artist delves deeper into their imaginative storytelling, referencing maps and interiors, particularly of opera houses, as well as symbols from cartoons, myths, and culture. This assembly of figures is set within landscapes that navigate the psychological terrains of alienation and transformation. With works already in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions like the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, romney is likely to see their reputation as a compelling voice in contemporary art grow this fall.

—J.T.J.

Pam Evelyn

B. 1996, Surrey, United Kingdom. Lives and works in London.

Pam Evelyn is one of the driving forces behind the art world’s current focus on women artists working in abstraction. Since finishing the MA in painting program at London’s Royal College of Art in 2020, the young artist has experienced a swift ascent, capped off recently with the announcement of her representation with Pace and debut solo show with the gallery in London this September. Titled “A Handful of Dust” and on view from September 6th through 30th, the show will span two floors and promises an in-depth view of the artist’s compelling practice.

Evelyn’s painting method is intense. Over the course of several months, she takes a very physical approach to large canvases, deploying multiple rounds of painting, scraping, and painting again, working and reworking the medium until final, expressive marks seem to vibrate off the surface. Some works incorporate collage, with strips of canvas adding to the rich textures.

The past few years have been eventful for Evelyn, as her works have been featured in solo shows at tastemaking galleries across Europe and the U.K., including MASSIMODECARLO (which works with her in Italy), The Approach, and Peres Projects.

Earlier this year, she was commissioned to create new etchings by Whitechapel Gallery on the occasion of the major exhibition “Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–1970.” Additionally, in 2023 thus far, her works have been included in two notable group surveys: “The Reason for Painting” at the Warwick Arts Centre, and “New British Abstraction” at the Center of International Contemporary Art in Vancouver, Canada.

—C.L.

Sydney Vernon

B. 1995, Prince George’s County, Maryland. Lives and works in Baltimore.

This fall, Baltimore–based artist Sydney Vernon will be presenting her first solo show at Kapp Kapp since joining the tastemaking gallery’s roster in January. The exhibition—her second solo show in New York—will showcase a fresh compilation of works on paper, marking Vernon’s first significant body of work since 2020.

With her nuanced use of pastel, colored pencil, and ink, Vernon takes viewers on an exploration of self and narrative that is deeply rooted in personal and generational histories. Vernon often begins her creative process with vintage family portraits or everyday moments captured in old photographs. She then expands from these initial images to integrate silhouettes from cultural and historical events, weaving together the personal and the universal into a singular tapestry of experience. Much like 1970s New York feminist artist Lorraine O’Grady—one of her inspirations—Vernon employs the diptych format to explore the dualities of truth and history to reflect her own unique viewpoint.

For example, in Kitchen Table (2023), an ink and pastel from the upcoming Kapp Kapp show, Vernon captures a sense of intimate yet diffuse memory, with one of three central figures rendered in fine detail, leaving the other two more anonymous and their faces hard to pinpoint.

In New York, Vernon has previously been included in prominent group shows like “Black Femme: Sovereign of WAP and the Virtual Realm” at Canada Gallery in 2021, as well as a solo show at Thierry Goldberg Gallery in 2020. This year has seen Vernon gaining an impressive momentum: Her work was recently included in a group show at Sargent’s Daughters in L.A.—the first in its new space.

—J.T.J.

Tetsuya Ishida

B. 1973, Shizuoka, Japan. D. 2005, Tokyo.

With solo exhibitions spanning from the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, and inclusion in prestigious events like the Gwangju Biennale and Venice Biennale, Tetsuya Ishida has gained considerable recognition since his death in 2005. His rising status was cemented by Gagosian’s recent announcement of its representation of the artist’s estate. Previously, the mega-gallery’s 2013 exhibition of Ishida’s work in Hong Kong broke new ground for the artist, drawing international attention to his oeuvre for the first time.

This fall will see the opening of a new solo show at the gallery’s New York space. “Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self,” curated by Cecilia Alemani, will be the most extensive exhibition of Ishida’s work staged outside Japan. It coincides with what would have been the artist’s 50th birthday, adding an extra layer of significance to the show.

Ishida, whose career was tragically cut short, captured the nihilism and desolation emblematic of Japan’s “Lost Decade” in the 1990s. His surrealistic works, often featuring self-referential characters trapped in nightmarish, Kafkaesque scenes, dissect the dehumanizing impact of social and technological changes. These characters are often disturbing hybrids of humans, animals, and machines, serving as poignant allegories for a society in flux.

—J.T.J.

Trevor Yeung

B.1988, Guangdong Province, China. Lives and works in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong–based artist Trevor Yeung is poised for a breakout moment with his first U.K. solo exhibition, “Soft ground,” which opens at Gasworks in London on September 28th and runs until December 17th. Venturing into the complex territory of social dynamics through botanic ecology, horticulture, and photography, Yeung’s installation works reshape how we understand power, control, and intimacy.

In the show, a scale soap cast replica of the infamous “fuck tree” of North London’s Hampstead Heath (which is worn smooth by frequent use) becomes a means to explore London’s gay cruising culture. Filling the gallery with an aromatic blend of earthy scents, Yeung’s sculptural installation will serve as an invitation to confront norms of desire, longing, and shame.

Having already made waves at major international events like the Singapore Biennale in 2022 (where he presented a site-specific installation of a greenhouse to house unwanted pandemic-purchased houseplants), Yeung’s rising status will be cemented further with his upcoming representation of Hong Kong at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. He was also recently shortlisted for The Sigg Prize 2023, which champions artists from the Greater China region.

—J.T.J.

Alexander James

B. 1993, London. Lives and works in London.

This summer, Alexander James’s paintings were included in a group show of portraiture at Marlborough London alongside modern masters of the genre like Celia Paul, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach. Now for fall, the gallery will feature the young artist’s work in a solo show entitled “Tuck Shop for the Wicked,” opening on September 23rd. The show will delve into his family history, expanding intimate memories using imagined scenarios across eight bright, gestural canvases.

The title of the show, for instance, references a sweet shop, like the one owned by the artist’s great-grandfather—a site of fascination for James, who only fully dedicated himself to painting during the pandemic. Compositionally, this new series of works is inspired by the artist’s early childhood visits to the British Museum, where he would admire the classical forms of busts, friezes, and entablature. These shapes create the basis for his vibrant canvases, which use sweeping, thick brushstrokes to conjure mixed-up, metamorphic forms.

As the artist’s star rises, with plenty of excitement from the London media and a growing Instagram following, he will see a second outing for his work in New York this autumn. A group show of abstract paintings, pairing him with artists like Rachel Garrard and Cleve Gray, will open at Room 57 Gallery in September.

—J.T.J.