8 Must-See Solo Gallery Shows in October

1. Carrie Moyer at Alexander Gray Associates, New York

A Brooklyn-based artist and activist who makes abstract paintings, collages, and prints that poetically allude to sensual forms of figuration, Carrie Moyer is celebrated for her ongoing experimentation with paint, textures, and techniques. Born in Detroit and schooled at Pratt Institute and Bard College, where she received an MFA in 2001, her first solo show with the gallery (strategically titled “Timber!”) offers eight new pulsating paintings, which brilliantly layer densely hued suggestive shapes over poured grounds, and four framed works on paper that skillfully mix cut and colored collaged elements on stained surfaces.

In this new series of shimmering pictures with teasingly ironic titles, including Fingering the Cosmos, Crying—Waiting—Hoping, and Etna’s Folly, the seasoned artist layers delicate brushwork with iridescent materials and playful paint pours to pull the viewer’s mind and eye profoundly into the work. Generously giving space between the placement of each piece, the gallery’s installation—like Moyer’s conceptual compositions—slows the audience down, allowing viewers to uncover more in the pictures than they may have initially seen.

Through October 26

2. Naudline Pierre at James Cohan, New York

Transcending the commonplace by creating imaginary worlds, Naudline Pierre makes paintings, drawings, and sculptures inspired by spiritual iconography and Renaissance masters. The daughter of a Haitian-American minister, the gifted artist has combined her religious upbringing with a grounding in art history to explore themes of love, loss, and benevolence in her finely crafted figurative works. Often focused on a central figure surrounded by impassioned characters, flames, and prismatic light, her colorful allegories capture voluptuous vixens in the moment of spiritual transformation.

In large-scale canvases like A Remembering, Awake My Love, and Dance of the Mythics, the Brooklyn-based artist paints dreamlike winged avatars ascending to celestial realms from fiery domains. Allowing the feathery female figures to dictate the scenarios they’ll inhabit, Pierre renders the otherworldly visions she has been having since childhood, turning her spiritual dreams into luminous paintings and her drippy abstract drawings into sculptural thresholds that turn the gallery into a portal for the artist’s marvelous multiverse.

Through October 19

3. Lee Bae at Perrotin, New York

Widely exhibited in South Korea and France—his birth country and adopted homeland, respectively—but lesser known elsewhere, Lee Bae’s striking abstract art originates with a single material: charcoal. From this crude, organic substance, which he makes himself by burning five different kinds of wood from the mountainous forest region of Cheongdo, South Korea, Bae inventively creates sublime sculptures, works on paper, paintings, and installations.

In his second solo exhibition at the international gallery’s New York locale, the Paris and Seoul-based artist transforms the ground-floor exhibition space into a monochromatic temple, referencing elements of his engaging 2024 Venice Biennale exhibition at the Wilmotte Foundation in Cannaregio. The immersive Perrotin exhibition, cleverly titled “Between” because of the dialogue linking the earthy material and performative movements of the artist’s body, features a monumental site-specific paper installation painted with charcoal ink and bronze sculptures capturing his gestural brushstrokes in three dimensions. Taking the Asian tradition of calligraphy, where you only work on the mark-making once and cannot go back over it, he magnificently brings the ancient art form into contemporary times.

Through October 19

4. Amy Lincoln at Sperone Westwater, New York

An Indiana-born, New York-based painter, Amy Lincoln paints eye-catching imagined landscapes filled with radiant skies, puffy clouds, cresting waves, rainstorms, and forests vibrantly lit by setting suns. Developed out of the artist’s paintings of more realistic yet equally fantastic views of nature, her more recent acrylic-on-panel paintings deftly depict the illusion of depth and motion abstractly. Constructing the entire meditative composition as a visual puzzle consisting of repeated transparent parts, Lincoln cleverly captures atmospheric conditions in simplified forms and blissful bands of color.

Through October 19

5. Duncan Hannah at The Journal Gallery, Los Angeles

A 1970s scene-maker on New York’s lively downtown art and music landscape, Duncan Hannah hung out with Andy Warhol, partied with musicians at CBGBs, and starred in underground films by Amos Poe before turning to painting as his primary passion in the edgy 1980s. A self-proclaimed cinematic voyeur who was born in Minneapolis and moved to New York in 1973 to study art, he eventually settled on a romantic style of realism that’s been fittingly compared to the deadpan delivery of Edward Hopper, with a bit of Balthus’ erotic nature thrown in to add a touch of spice.

Hannah’s “Flesh and Fantasy” exhibition at the gallery features paintings of movie stars like Jean Seberg and Anne Hathaway, urban cinemas, covers from European cinema magazines, scenes from foreign films, and nude young women in cinematic poses. A love letter from the artist to both movies and art history, his paintings portray a sincere form of realism rarely seen in the contemporary art world today.

Through October 31

6. Matthew Brannon at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

An artist captivated by the political and cultural ramifications of the 1970s, which was the era of his childhood, Matthew Brannon makes poster-like artworks about music, movies, product design, and typography that mix hand-drawn and hand-painted elements with silkscreen, letterpress, and offset printing. Born in Anchorage and based in New York, Brannon thoroughly researches his subjects before visually translating them for modern times.

His exhibition, “Le Gant de Velours, Traversing the Fantasy, and the Thousand Yard Stare (Disparate Subjects Happening Concurrently, 1977-1979),” takes viewers on a rollercoaster ride through the artist’s personal history and reflections on the period. Graphic text paintings like and so 1977 mix the confessions of a six-year-old with thoughts of his future self, while strikingly designed works on paper, including Friend of the Devil (I) and Payphones, Peep Shows, Mean Streets, Friendly Faces, Queer Noir & Broken Lipstick, present music and movies as corrupting forms of entertainment in a world where death and destruction are simultaneously taking place.

Through October 19

7. Tahnee Lonsdale at Night Gallery, Los Angeles

Born in England and based in Los Angeles, Tahnee Lonsdale paints totemic figures of women in groups and processions with soft, feathery forms. Inspired by the curvilinear characters in Henry Moore’s iconic sculptures, Lonsdale builds her paintings from a central color. She starts with a color field and builds the enigmatic figures from the inside out, resulting in mostly monochromatic canvases with stylized female forms creating symbolic communities. Layered in transparent washes of contrasting and related colors, her chimerical feminine spirits shine an attentive light on motherhood and migration.

Through October 19

8. Willa Nasatir at Sea View, Los Angeles

Transforming figures and everyday objects through mirrored distortions and layered fragmentation, Willa Nasatir creates colorful abstract paintings and photographs, which are highly complex yet harmonious. Earning a BFA from Cooper Union in 2012, the Santa Monica-born, New York-based artist soon showed her experimental works in one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Making her solo show debut at Sea View, an intimate gallery space built by Jorge Pardo as a “social sculpture” in the late 1990s, her surreal, shape-shifting compositions seem right at home in the stylish setting.

Through October 26