8 Must-See Solo Gallery Shows in February

Rounding up the top gallery exhibitions across the United States each month, Galerie traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast with a stop in the Midwest to showcase the best solo shows for February. From Gregor Hildebrandt’s immersive installation of thousands of cut colored record tiles interpreting iconic stained-glass windows at Perrotin in New York and Lui Shtini’s anthropomorphic sculptures and paintings that blur the lines between abstraction and figuration at Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey, to Rebecca Manson’s sculptures of butterfly wings and flowers made of thousands of hand-shaped, glazed porcelain pieces at Jessica Silverman in San Francisco, these are the not-to-be-missed shows this month.

1. Gregor Hildebrandt | Perrotin

A German artist known for transforming analog recording media—such as cassette tapes, VHS tapes, and vinyl records—into abstract paintings, sculptures, and large-scale installations, Gregor Hildebrandt explores themes of memory, nostalgia, and time by using music and film as physical materials to visually represent sound in a silent form. His striking exhibition, “Blau im Gedächtnis (Blue in Memoriam),” at the gallery draws inspiration from the stained-glass windows of Berlin’s historic Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and from a vinyl record of a Bach cantata, recorded at the church, with the windows depicted on the sleeve, which was a gift from a friend.

Consisting of nearly 3,000 painterly square tiles crafted from over 8,000 vinyl records that he pressed in various colors and fragmented with a water jet, the installation captures the sensation the Berlin-based artist experienced when first visiting the church, while creating an immersive environment for visitors. Complementing the installation are a selection of his inventive cassette shelf portraits of cultural icons, like Sharon Stone, Catherine Deneuve, and the recently deceased Brigitte Bardot, along with two of his Brancusi-inspired columns made from stacked vinyl record bowls, two monochromatic cut record reliefs, and several other creative abstractions crafted from sound materials.

Through February 18

2. Yoab Vera | Alexander Berggruen, New York

Yoab Vera is a Mexican artist who creates what he calls “haptic contemplative painting,” a practice that combines architecture, spirituality, and mindfulness. Celebrated for creating paintings that focus on the sea horizon as a meditation motif, he uses it to explore the flow of time, memory, and light. Inspired by the Emotional Architecture of Mexican modernists like Luis Barragán, his pastel-colored canvases stand out for their use of exposed concrete paired with traditional media like oil and oil stick, which he applies by hand in repetitive, horizontal motions that reflect his meditative practice.

Presenting a selection of 13 new paintings in “Spirit of Hope—Sueños Diurnos,” the Mexico City and Istanbul-based artist’s second solo show with the gallery, his use of vibrant, saturated colors (pinks, yellows, and deep blues) directly pays homage to the pigmented walls found in Barragán’s work. His paintings often blend natural landscapes with the urban environments of cities he’s lived in, including Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, and Istanbul—these current canvases were created in the same Coyoacán neighborhood where Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo once worked. Trained as an architect, Vera uses light and color to evoke spiritual serenity in physical structures, creating metaphysical spaces that invite viewers to pause and reflect.

Through February 25

3. John Kelly | P·P·O·W, New York

An American performance and visual artist known for creating character-driven visual theater that combines dance, music, and song, John Kelly has remained a prominent presence in New York’s East Village art scene since the 1980s. Creating work that often dramatizes the lives of historical figures, social outsiders, and the artistic process, he has performed entire concert pieces as Joni Mitchell, produced a dance-theater piece based on the Viennese Expressionist painter Egon Schiele, and explored the life of Italian painter Caravaggio through song and video, among other intriguing performance works.

The exhibition “A FRIEND GAVE ME A BOOK” showcases his epic 182-panel hand-illustrated graphic memoir and a multi-channel video performance of the same name. Much of his work focuses on the AIDS epidemic, queer identity, and the development of self through art, highlighting the character-channeling artist’s use of historical and pop-culture personas to explore ideas of gender, truth, death, and the pursuit of creative identity. The graphic memoir—created between 2016 and 2025—retells a trapeze fall where he broke his neck, blending personal trauma with a reflection on lives lived fully despite estrangement, loneliness, and death.

Through February 21

4. Odili Donald Odita | David Kordansky Gallery, New York

Odili Donald Odita, a Nigerian American abstract artist, is distinguished by his vibrant, large-scale geometric paintings that utilize color as a tangible element to investigate themes of identity, race, and sociopolitics. His signature paintings and murals feature interlocking triangular and quadrilateral shapes, created with hand-mixed colors that he claims he never uses twice. Since 2006, he has gained recognition for monumental site-specific wall installations, with a current project—titled “Songs from Life”—covering six walls and seven columns in the lobby of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

At the gallery, the exhibition “Shadowland” features paintings, photo collages, and a mural by the Philadelphia-based artist, along with two works from the 1970s by his late father. Odita organized the exhibit into three parts—current, past, and inherited—creating a cohesive narrative. This structure shows how his art evolved and links his Nigerian American identity with family and geopolitical histories. His work goes beyond hard-edge abstraction to include Mbuti barkcloth patterns, cinematic screens, music, graphic design, and textiles from Nigeria and America. This variety highlights universal human impulses, which are both unique and shared across cultures and history, inspiring artists for centuries.

Through February 28

5. Regina Silveira | Alexander Gray Associates, New York

A renowned Brazilian artist based in São Paulo, Regina Silveira is famous for her innovative installations that transform space, perception, and light. As a major figure in post-conceptual Latin American art, she is especially recognized for her work with skiagraphia, the study of shadows, where she creates large-scale optical illusions by distorting the shadows of everyday objects. She works with site-specific vinyl cutouts and digital projections on buildings, streets, and parks. Though rooted in graphic arts like printmaking and drawing, she also explores video, embroidery, porcelain, and virtual reality.

The gallery’s “Latin American Puzzle” exhibition features the 1997 vinyl cutout To Be Continued… from the artist’s Latin American Puzzle series, along with the latest version from 2025, appropriately titled Continued….Equally impressive, both works feature 110 large, interlocking jigsaw pieces. Of these, 100 pieces in each display a bold image that represents the region’s diverse cultures, histories, and landscapes. Building on her long-standing exploration of image circulation, Silveira combines iconic figures and key events with symbols from popular culture, sports, and the arts, as well as maps, flora, and fauna. Through these vivid contrasts, Silveira emphasizes the complexities and contradictions that shape Latin America’s shared and evolving stories.

Through February 14

6. Lui Shtini | Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago

Lui Shtini is an artist born in Albania and based in Brooklyn, recognized for his drawings, sculptures, and intricate paintings that blur the lines between abstraction and figuration. His work features anthropomorphic and biomorphic forms that evoke body parts, landscapes, or animals, while exploring themes of quiet violence, tension, and the conflict between two interconnected or opposing forms. He is known for the physicality of his surfaces, using oil and enamel to create textured effects that can appear hairy, fuzzy, slick, or pockmarked. Initially working with oil on board, he now uses aluminum composite panels, which provide a stiff, industrial surface that contrasts with the organic, fleshy qualities of his subjects.

Featuring new sculptures and paintings, the “Capo Testa” exhibition at the gallery draws inspiration from a Sardinian cape the artist visited frequently over the past decade. Shaped by the sea and time, the cape’s boulders captivated him, inspiring imaginary worlds. Marked by striking desolation, these scenes culminated in a new series of large paintings, with two on display. While earlier works used saturated hues, his new group emphasizes line, volume, and composition with minimal color. Alongside the paintings, Shtini introduces a series of figurative, mask-like cork sculptures mounted on metal, which also stem from his engagement with Sardinian landscape and the country’s cultural traditions.

Through February 28

7. Wolfgang Tillmans | Regen Projects, Los Angeles

A prominent German artist known for his innovative and versatile photography, Wolfgang Tillmans gained recognition in the 1990s and became the first photographer and non-British person to win the Turner Prize in 2000. The Berlin and London based-artist is celebrated for his distinctive body of work and artistic practices, such as documenting the London and Berlin club scenes, creating abstract camera-less photography, making contemporary still lifes with everyday objects, designing sculptural tabletop installations that combine his photographs with news clippings and socially relevant found materials, and adopting a unique exhibition style where groups of unframed prints in various sizes are pinned or taped directly onto gallery walls.

The gallery’s exhibition, “Keep Movin’,” highlights key themes of Tillmans’s work through new photographs, videos, sculptural installations, and a new version of Truth Study Center, his distinctive tabletop installations. The exhibition explores the development of his unique visual style and conceptual focus, showcasing how the artist perceives his work as balancing the tangible aspects of the world around him with sociopolitical, sensual, and spiritual themes that underpin his practice. His work shows sensitivity to the interplay between past and present, the fragility of stable structures, and the transformation of matter. Throughout the exhibition, Tillmans underscores interconnectedness—among people, materials, histories, and images.

Through March 1

8. Rebecca Manson | Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

Rebecca Manson is a Brooklyn-based sculptor celebrated for her large ceramic installations inspired by nature. Her primary medium is porcelain, which she uses to examine themes of embodiment, transformation, and the beauty of decay. She is renowned for creating massive sculptures of butterfly and moth wings made of thousands of hand-shaped, glazed porcelain pieces, designed to replicate the microscopic scales of real insect wings. This meticulous process is labor-intensive, sometimes involving up to 200,000 porcelain elements for a single piece. In collaboration with engineers, she has developed a flexible adhesive that enables her rigid porcelain structures to drape and function like textiles when displayed.

Following the gallery’s announcement of its representation of the artist, her debut solo exhibition, “Time, You Must Be Laughing,” is inspired by Joni Mitchell’s 1975 song Sweet Bird and explores the dark humor inherent in impermanence. Featuring 13 sculptures mainly crafted from porcelain, the pieces depict oversized butterfly and moth wings, flowers, and a swing set. They examine the connections between bodies and nature, and how time acts as a force that transforms both. Seeing change as ongoing, she frames her work as a space where grief can be lifted, and nature’s resilience offers hope. Balancing strength and vulnerability, her art shows that transformation—emotional, ecological, or material—is not just something to withstand but a place where new meaning emerges.

Through February 28