10 STANDOUT BOOTHS AT FRIEZE NEW YORK 2025

Each May, Frieze New York transforms the city into a global epicenter of contemporary art, and 2025 is no exception. Housed once again at The Shed, this year’s edition brings together an eclectic mix of blue-chip stalwarts and rising talent, all under one architectural marvel in Hudson Yards. As the fair continues to refine its scale and scope, what emerges is a more focused and intentional presentation — one that captures the pulse of today’s art world while offering a glimpse into its future.

Despite a backdrop of economic unease and market uncertainty, the atmosphere at Frieze New York 2025’s VIP preview on May 7th was anything but bleak. Under unusually bright spring skies, The Shed buzzed with optimism and energy, offering a much-needed contrast to the turbulent conversations that have recently dominated the art world. With the U.S. economy showing signs of contraction and consumer sentiment hitting historic lows, all eyes were on how this year’s edition would respond to the shifting tides. Yet Frieze met the moment with confidence and flair, delivering a curated but impactful fair that brought together 67 galleries from over 25 countries. From powerhouse names like Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth to bold emerging voices in the Focus section, Frieze New York once again reaffirmed its relevance as a key fixture in the contemporary art landscape.

At MASH, we’ve selected the standout booths that captured our attention at Frieze New York 2025.

1. Gagosian

At Frieze New York 2025, Gagosian presents a focused solo booth featuring three monumental sculptures by Jeff Koons, marking nearly 25 years of collaboration between the artist and the gallery. On view are Hulk (Organ), Hulk (Tubas), and Hulk (Dragon and Turtle) — all part of Koons’s long-running Hulk Elvis series. Set against an immersive vinyl backdrop, the presentation is fully conceived by Koons himself, who was involved in everything from artwork selection to booth design.

Drawn from the artist’s personal collection, these works pair the cartoonish figure of the Incredible Hulk with unexpected objects — tubas, organs, dragons — rendered in glossy polychrome bronze. The tension between the readymade and the sublime, a hallmark of Koons’s practice, is on full display. The sculptures echo his ongoing exploration of materiality, surface, and cultural symbolism, channeling themes of power, vulnerability, and spectacle.

2. James Cohan Gallery

James Cohan presents a solo booth of new works by Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Using fragments of unexploded ordnance (UXOs) recovered in central Vietnam, Nguyen transforms remnants of war into sculptural objects that reflect on memory, trauma, and regeneration. Created in collaboration with local communities and demining groups, the works explore the idea of material memory and the potential for healing through transformation.

The kinetic sculptures Outburst and Tremor (2025) echo the compositional style of Alexander Calder, moving in response to air and sound vibrations. Tuned by a sound healer, they emit calibrated frequencies to create a quiet, meditative soundscape. On the walls, Scars (2025) features oxidized artillery shells shaped to resemble dragon scales — symbols of strength and renewal in Vietnamese mythology. Together, the works blend mythology, history, and ritual into a thoughtful reflection on resilience and the possibility of repair.

3. Victoria Miro

Victoria Miro brings together a thoughtfully curated selection of new, recent, and historical works by a diverse group of artists including Chris Ofili, Sarah Sze, María Berrío, Alice Neel, and Paula Rego. The presentation spans painting, drawing, and mixed media, reflecting the gallery’s ongoing commitment to both established voices and emerging perspectives.

This year’s booth centers on themes of literature and place. Chris Ofili’s works engage with Shakespeare’s Othello, while Celia Paul draws on her connection to the Brontë sisters. Chantal Joffe’s portrait of writer Hettie Judah and Paula Rego’s Marathon (Running II) — inspired by a visit to New York in the early 1980s — highlight the influence of the written word and the city itself. Presented at Booth A8, the selection offers a layered dialogue between visual storytelling, personal histories, and cultural memory.

4. Casey Kaplan

At Frieze New York 2025, Casey Kaplan showcases new sculptural works by New York–based artist Hannah Levy. Known for her precise manipulation of industrial materials, Levy shapes steel and slumped glass into forms that feel both bodily and mechanical. The centerpiece, Untitled (2025), features five slender steel arms that hold a warped orange glass basin — part bassinet, part specter. These new works test how materials stretch, sag, and resist, creating tension-filled structures that appear to hover between utility and collapse.

Levy draws from design histories, referencing the minimalist curves of Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray while undermining their focus on function. Her sculptures — some freestanding, others wall-mounted — balance elegance with unease. Fragile glass presses against claw-like steel, hinting at both containment and vulnerability. As materials and design languages intersect, Levy’s work invites a physical and psychological response that lingers.

5. Tina Kim Gallery

Tina Kim Gallery returns to Frieze New York 2025 with a focused presentation of women artists working with textiles and mixed materials. Featuring works by Pacita Abad, Ghada Amer, Suki Seokyeong Kang, Maia Ruth Lee, Mire Lee, and Lee ShinJa, the booth highlights how practices like stitching, dyeing, and binding can be used to transform material into powerful visual language. A rare work from Abad’s Endless Blues series exemplifies her vibrant “trapunto” style, while Mire Lee’s organic sculptures continue her exploration of decay and corporeality using silicone and steel.

Ghada Amer’s embroidered bronze Homage à Tut in Black and White reframes traditional craft as political gesture, and Suki Seokyeong Kang’s modular constructions explore spatial balance through grids and natural motifs. Maia Ruth Lee’s ink-dyed canvases, tied and bound in reference to migrant labour, map diasporic memory, while Lee ShinJa’s expressive tapestries elevate fiber as fine art. The presentation reflects Tina Kim Gallery’s commitment to cross-generational and cross-cultural dialogue within contemporary practice.

6. Gallery Hyundai

Gallery Hyundai presents a solo booth of Moon Kyungwon at Frieze New York 2025, showcasing nine paintings from her Soft Curtain series (2023–2025). Known for working across media, Moon approaches landscape not as static scenery but as a conceptual and sensory threshold. In this new body of work, landscapes function as veils—layers of memory, perception, and time that ask what lies beyond visibility. Faded hues, reflections, and textured surfaces hint at absence, disappearance, and renewal. Recent works such as Soft Curtain_Afterimage II and Soft Curtain_White I–IV explore transience and temporality, shaped by the artist’s altered perception following partial vision loss.

Rooted in Moon’s broader engagement with phenomenology, media, and the politics of looking, the Soft Curtain series challenges the utility of painting in an image-saturated world. Rather than offer spectacle, Moon’s canvases slow down vision and invite introspection.

Her work positions art as a space for questioning: who is the viewer, and what does the landscape conceal? By merging brushwork with conceptual rigor, Moon redefines the landscape genre as a living archive of fragility and potential, creating a deeply meditative experience at the intersection of memory, and time.

7. Perrotin

Perrotin presents a solo booth of new paintings by Claire Tabouret for Frieze New York 2025. Known for her emotive portraiture, Tabouret unveils seven recent works that delve into memory, nostalgia, and the quiet states of sleep. Rendered in rich greens and purples, the paintings evoke a hushed, dreamlike atmosphere, where layered brushwork captures figures in moments of stillness or inward reflection. From depictions of slumbering family members to expressive self-portraits, these works explore the fragile terrain between consciousness and reverie.

The presentation highlights Tabouret’s ongoing interest in emotional states and interpersonal connection, drawing on both personal memory and art historical motifs. Her portraits, suspended in time, offer space for contemplation — blurring the line between interiority and outward gaze. A complementary selection of works is also on view at Perrotin’s New York showroom at 130 Orchard Street.

8. Hales Gallery

For Frieze New York 2025, Hales presents a selection of historic and recent works by artists engaging themes of identity, memory, and resistance. The presentation includes Sunil Gupta, Chitra Ganesh, Anthony Cudahy, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Andrea Geyer, Hew Locke, Kay WalkingStick, Jordan Ann Craig, and Tessa Boffin — each exploring personal and political narratives through distinct visual approaches.

Spanning photography, painting, and mixed media, the works highlight diasporic experience, queer histories, and feminist perspectives. The presentation reflects Hales Gallery’s commitment to artists who question dominant narratives and expand the scope of contemporary art.

9. Public Gallery

Public Gallery presents a solo booth by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, whose practice spans animation, sound, performance, and video games to archive Black trans experiences. Working across virtual and physical formats, the artist creates interactive works that explore themes of transphobia, racism, memory, and care through choose-your-own-adventure video games and installations.

On view are three of Brathwaite-Shirley’s interactive works — WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT (2020–2023), PIRATING BLACKNESS (2021), and NO SPACE FOR REDEMPTION (2024) — alongside new works on paper and a sculptural installation. Together, these form a diaristic response to ongoing anti-trans legislation and right-wing agendas worldwide.

Her work reimagines archival practice through glitch aesthetics, lo-fi graphics, and communal coding processes, building worlds that center Black trans lives. Textures and digital spaces become sites of testimony, remembrance, and resistance, guided by the artist’s rule: once created, nothing is deleted. By entering Brathwaite-Shirley’s games, visitors agree to participate in a social contract that requires reflection, accountability, and care.

10. Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth presents a focused group presentation at Booth B08, featuring works by Mary Heilmann, Rashid Johnson, Thomas J Price, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, and the late Jack Whitten — artists whose practices span diverse geographies and approaches to material, memory, and representation. Together, they explore the expressive possibilities of abstraction, portraiture, sculpture, and mixed media to engage with themes of identity, history, and the politics of visibility.

From Heilmann’s bold geometric forms and Johnson’s use of culturally resonant materials like shea butter and tile, to Price’s reimagining of classical sculpture and Sherald’s intimate portrayals of Black life, the presentation moves fluidly across media and meaning. Simpson’s fragmentary collages and Whitten’s textured, historically layered paintings further underscore a collective commitment to interrogating the past while shaping new visual narratives.

Text by Shalini Passi

Photo courtesy: Frieze New York, Casey Kelbaugh, Gagosian, Jeff Koons, James Cohan Gallery, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Inka Essenhigh, Victoria Miro, Casey Kaplan, Hannah Levy, Tina Kim Gallery, Mire Lee, Gallery Hyundai, Kyungwon Moon, Perrotin Gallery, Claire Tabouret, Hales Gallery, Sunil Gupta, Public Gallery, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Hauser & Wirth, and Rashid Johnson

Find out more about Frieze New York 2025 here:

www.frieze.com/fairs/frieze-new-york

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