7 Must-See Solo Gallery Shows in August

Rounding up the best gallery exhibitions across the United States each month, Galerie journeyed from New York to California to highlight the top solo shows for August. From Julian Schnabel’s new signature plate and map paintings of umbrella pine trees, painted in Tuscany after filming his latest movie in Italy, at Pace in New York to old and new paintings, bronzes, and sculptural lamps by Urs Fischer in a multi-venue show at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles and Brazilian painter Ana Elisa Egreja’s U.S. debut with colorful canvas collages that conceptually fuse the techniques of Old Master still lifes with contemporary Pop culture items at Jessica Silverman in San Francisco, these are the not-to-be-missed shows this month.

1. Julian Schnabel | Pace, New York

An acclaimed American artist and filmmaker, Julian Schnabel achieved international fame in the late 1970s and 1980s for championing a passionate, expressive approach to painting that rejected the detached intellectualism of Minimalism and Conceptual art. Although he primarily sees himself as a painter, he is widely recognized for directing visually striking, poetic biographical films, including Basquiat, which chronicles the meteoric rise and tragic downfall of Jean-Michel Basquiat; At Eternity’s Gate, which offers an intimate look at the final years of Vincent van Gogh; and In the Hand of Dante, a recently released epic thriller that explores the discovery of Dante’s original manuscript of The Divine Comedy.

Inspired by the native Italian umbrella pines in the gardens surrounding the legendary Villa Borghese in Rome while filming his latest movie, Schnabel created a new series of his signature plate and map paintings of these evergreen pines, resulting in 17 new works on view in the engaging exhibition “Italy Through Its Trees.” Recalling his first visits to Italy as an emerging artist in his twenties, he took a house in Tuscany as his studio to explore his earliest ways of working. He painted the surrounding umbrella pines on 18th-century maps of Italy en plein air, then used those map paintings as drawings for the larger canvases, expressively painting over the shattered crockery on the studio floor with a brush on a stick, physically inhabiting the evocative paintings as he created them.

Through August 14

2. Robert Mangold | Mignoni, New York

Robert Mangold is an American abstract painter widely recognized for his key influence on the Minimalist art movement. Renowned for his large-scale paintings, prints, and drawings that explore the fundamental geometric relationships among shape, line, and color, he is represented in prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Throughout his career, he has pushed the limits of traditional painting, deliberately using tools such as paint rollers to minimize personal brushwork and maintain a flat, even surface, adopting an analytical, disciplined approach that harmonizes structural limitations with graceful, poetic curves.

Presenting eight differently shaped canvases constructed from monochromatic or modeled acrylic planes, overlaid with pencil lines, the exhibition “Paintings 1973-2012” explores more than five decades of the artist’s highly sophisticated works. Color and line are treated as separate elements, connected solely through the act of painting. In these works, the physical form of the painting plays a crucial role. Multi-panel arrangements highlight the joints between canvases, and shaped supports and apertures break the traditional rectangular shape. Mangold bypasses gesture and illusion, opting for a measured approach that shows how a painting can stand as a complete, self-contained object.

Through August 14

3. Sara Flores | White Cube, New York

A Peruvian Indigenous artist of the Shipibo-Konibo nation, which resides along the Ucayali River in the Amazon basin, Sara Flores has gained international recognition for her work, notably becoming the first Indigenous artist to represent Peru with a solo national pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Flores creates intricate, hand-painted geometric art rooted in the ancient Amazonian Kené tradition, a sacred, unwritten visual design language passed down through matrilineal lines. Her work is highly collaborative: she maps the main broken lines, while her daughters and granddaughters help complete the secondary parallel patterns, ensuring the continuation of ancestral knowledge through their active participation.

Her “Akinananti” exhibition showcases new and historical patterned paintings created with vegetal dyes and pigments on wild-cotton canvas from her environment. It explores neural, psychological, elemental, ecological, and spiritual networks, weaving them into a complex, interconnected whole. Akinananti is work done with love and joy, embodying a practice rooted in reciprocity, interconnectedness, and mutual support. It highlights that individual well-being depends on community and environmental health, promoting growth for both. Her work expands the traditional concept of Kené, an ancient Shipibo design practice central to their art, values, and spirituality. Kené, meaning design and related to kéenti, meaning to love or care for, represents their resistance to colonial forces that cause ecological damage and pollution in their homeland.

Through August 14

4. Enrico David |  VeneKlasen, New York

An Italian sculptor, draftsman, and designer living and working in London, Enrico David creates poetic works that evoke elements of early-20th-century art. Shortlisted for the 2009 Turner Prize and featured in “The Encyclopedic Palace,” Massimiliano Gioni’s acclaimed exhibition at the 2013 Venice Biennale, David’s work primarily focuses on the human figure, examining themes of identity, transformation, and the body’s psychological states.

The first exhibition dedicated solely to the artist’s graphic pieces, “Works on Paper 1995–2026,” offers a compelling selection of drawings, watercolors, and collages that blur the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, and between the concrete and the surreal. David often transforms fleeting images into three-dimensional forms, underscoring drawing’s central role in his practice. Works on view from the past 30+ years, including studies, sketches, and finished pieces, showcase the artist’s distinctively poetic vision at every turn.

Through September 6

5. Urs Fischer | Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles

Urs Fischer is a celebrated Swiss artist known worldwide for his rebellious, unpredictable, and genre-crossing creations, including sculpture, large installations, digital media, and paintings. Initially trained in photography, he rose to prominence in the art scene by examining themes such as transformation, decay, perception, and the challenge to ordinary objects. The multidisciplinary artist’s creative vocabulary—ranging from melting wax sculptures and tiny clay figures scaled up to larger pieces to digital artworks and architectural interventions—is extremely diverse, employing a wide array of both stable and highly unstable materials to provoke viewers’ perceptions of physical space.

Taking over the gallery’s two substantial spaces and the bookstore, his multipart “YES” and “LA DUST” exhibitions present a series of large bronze sculptures made from small clay figures in the YES section, new paintings created from scans of dust from the artist’s Los Angeles studio floor, and a new series of shadow lamps in the transformed bookstore. The playful sculptures were originally cast from clay works by invited participants in Fischer’s 2013 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles exhibition, organized by Jeffrey Deitch, the museum’s director at the time. Relatedly, the more cerebral dust paintings reference an earlier body of Fischer’s work from an exhibition Deitch presented at MOCA in 2012, while the new shadow lamps transform images of hand-molded clay into industrial design, a realm the talented artist has recently ventured into. 

Through August 15

6. Terri Friedman | Anthony Meier, Mill Valley

Terri Friedman, a California-based mixed-media fiber artist and educator, is renowned for her large, vibrant, and tactile “yarn paintings” and weavings. Born in Colorado and educated at Brown University and the Claremont Graduate School, she initially worked as a painter and sculptor before shifting to weaving on a floor loom after seeing a monumental Joan Miró tapestry in Barcelona about 12 years ago. She now approaches the loom with a painterly and sculptural sensibility, producing works that deliberately challenge conventional weaving norms.

“Overmuch,” the Bay Area artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, showcases 18 woven textile pieces in various sizes, created between 2019 and 2026. Friedman’s textile works encompass material objects, spatial interventions, and emotional elements. Their vibrant color palettes match the exhibition’s title, an Old English term meaning “too much” or “very much.’ Friedman reinterprets it as a sign of abundance, celebrating the richness of lived experience. Each piece begins with a word or phrase and develops through an intuitive yet organized exploration of material and color. Drawing on decades of collecting fibers, yarns, cloth, and textiles—ranging from Icelandic wool and upholstery piping to painted fibers and commercial neon acrylics—the artist uses the loom to brilliantly express sensations and mood.

Through September 18

7. Ana Elisa Egreja | Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

A Brazilian painter known for her vibrant, large-scale oil paintings that combine elements of magical realism, classical traditions, and detailed domestic scenes, Ana Elisa Egreja creates intricate, multi-layered visual stories mainly within two overlapping genres: interior portraits and still lifes. Rather than painting from pure imagination, Egreja works like a stage director, frequently transforming real, sometimes abandoned spaces through physical decoration—adding water, plants, particular objects, or unexpected wildlife—then photographing these arrangements, which are devoid of human figures yet imply them, to create her canvas collages.

Presenting the São Paulo-based artist’s first solo show in the United States, “The Flight of Color” features 15 new oil paintings that conceptually blend the precise techniques of Dutch Golden Age still lifes with contemporary Pop culture items. She uses still life to capture everyday objects that hold cultural significance or evoke shared memories, thereby preserving collective consciousness over time. She documents what fascinates her—ranging from furniture to food packaging—and combines these elements into highly symbolic compositions featuring foods, flowers, textiles, and found objects. She draws on Old Master still life traditions while embracing the creative freedom of collage to chronicle a world in flux. 

Through September 3