Where to See Stellar Collectible Design in New York During Armory Week
A wealth of design-focused exhibitions are popping up across New York in response to the Armory Show and second edition of Collectible
September isn’t officially New York’s design month, but action-packed gallery agendas might convince you otherwise. Collectors and enthusiasts are flocking to town for the Armory Show and the second edition of Collectible—and the city’s design galleries are rising to the occasion with standout exhibitions that push material boundaries and showcase the city’s stronghold of creative ingenuity. From Chris Wolston’s maximalist bronze botanicals to Colin Knight’s heady wartime psychodramas, scroll below to explore nine design-focused exhibitions that caught Galerie’s eye.
1. “Colin Knight: Hero’s Wreck” at Superhouse | Chinatown
The rising Richmond-based talent transforms wartime detritus into allegorical relics that recast classic midcentury furnishings as vessels for psychic reckoning. Tracing the narrative of twin protagonists—one modeled after Joseph Beuys, the other a fictional Spitfire pilot—the show unfolds as an epic interrogation of masculine ideals through trauma and myth. Knight deploys visceral materials (salvaged leather, sheepskin, beeswax, soap) across emotionally charged pieces, from lifecraft-inspired chairs to leather cushions shaped like bodies. One echoes an Eames lounger wrapped in paratrooper’s gear; another, a maple table inset with stoneware, functions as a quiet memorial. A rice paper wing pendant hovers spectrally above it all.
September 5–October 18
2. “Luna Paiva: The Seed” at StudioTwentySeven | Tribeca
In her most versatile body of work to date, Franco-Argentine artist Luna Paiva transforms cast-off construction materials into glazed ceramic totems that dance between sculpture and function. Curated and scenographed by StudioTwentySeven founders Nacho Polo and Robert Onuska, the show immerses visitors in a Brutalist dreamscape of modular beams, totem cubes, and whimsical structures that practically beg one to climb them. It marks a gleeful shift away from the Barcelona-based artist’s signature monumental sculptures and toward colorful ceramics and colored pencil drawings that draw from megalithic architecture and playground structures alike. “I discovered the satisfaction of creating climbable, jumpable, and crossable sculptures,” she says, “where beauty becomes useful and ultimately meaningful.”
September 4—November 10
3. “Pol Agustí: Santos de Nada” at Zak+Fox | Gramercy Park
Lately, Pol Agustí has been repurposing discarded fiberglass molds—once used to restore religious statuary and build film props—into poetic lamps that riff on faith and transformation. Presented by AGO Projects, the show gathers over a dozen works the Mexico City artist crafted from found forms and regional woods like tzalam and parota. In one, a pair of angelic hands reemerges as a suspended gesture; others evoke scallop shells, fertility goddesses, or ritual tools. Through exposed joinery, raw textures, and references to Catholic and pagan traditions, Agustí builds a symbolic vocabulary where light itself becomes a type of devotional offering.
September 4–October 8
4. “Future Nature” at GLO Modern | Two Bridges
Lora Appleton of Kinder Modern and Lena Imamura of GLO Studio are joining forces to launch GLO Modern—a hybrid gallery, design shop, and fabrication studio—with a genre-blurring group show exploring our precarious relationship with the planet. More than 20 artists and designers, including Joseph Algieri, Trish Anderson, and Janny Baek, present ceramics, textiles, sculpture, video, and neon works awash in radiant hues. Blobs, drips, cast forms, and sedimented layers offer a playful reckoning with environmental anxiety while anchoring the gallery’s raison d’être as an experimental waypoint to champion cross-disciplinary creativity.
September 4–October 16
5. “Chris Wolston: Gilding the Lily” at The Future Perfect | West Village
Chris Wolston’s latest bounty of nature-inspired furnishings nods to a critique waged by art historian Irene Sargent, who warned of a “crisis in decorative art” arising from Art Nouveau’s seductive “wavy line” more than a century ago. In response, the Medellín and New York–based artist revels in maximalist ornamentation with a return to metal: new sand-cast bronze and aluminum furniture plus wool tapestries woven in Morocco and chandeliers made from discarded glass. Among the highlights: tulip-shaped side tables, daisy-studded mohair sofas, and Stickley-inspired chairs clad in William Morris fabric. “I’ve always been drawn to moments where structure breaks down,” Wolston says, “where a chair wants to dance or a flower wants to be bronze.”
September 3–October 22
6. “Rich Aybar: Rubberworks” at TIWA Select | Tribeca
Rich Aybar is debuting several bodies of work across 20 amber-hued pieces—sconces, chairs, tables, and chandeliers—that foreground the Dominican-American artist’s mastery of rubber, an industrial material he favors for its physical and historical complexity. The pared-back Knob series, which includes a standing lamp, table lamp, and wall sconces, emphasizes clean lines and architectural clarity. The Pipe and Wood collections, consisting of chairs, stools, and tables fashioned from salvaged wood and bent steel, deliberately embrace tactility and contrast, where rubber supports rough-hewn wood and wire winds through joints. Anchoring the show are two one-off chandeliers that embody Aybar’s sculptural proclivities with luminous panache.
September 5—October 8
7. “Carmen D’Apollonio: Salut, Ça Va, C’est Moi” at Friedman Benda | Chelsea
With her fourth and most ambitious solo exhibition to date, Carmen D’Apollonio is leaning headlong into theatricality. The self-taught sculptor transforms Friedman Benda into a surreal stage populated by anthropomorphic lamps that twist, sprawl, drip, and dangle across walls, ceilings, and pedestals. Known for her clay-based lighting with disarming titles and offbeat humor, the Angeleno introduces sculpted glass shades for the first time—reflective forms that bend light and further illuminate her aptitude for material experimentation.
September 11—October 16
8. “Six Artists Use Clay” at Guild Gallery | Soho
Guild Gallery’s summer show presents clay in all its elemental vitality, gathering six artists across time and geography who approach ceramics in wildly different ways. Syotatsu buries his paintings in soil, using clay, indigo, and charcoal for primordial mark-making. Kansai Noguchi’s hand-sculpted forms contort with biomorphic irregularity; Mariko Ijuin’s molten-hued disks read like geological cross-sections. The late George Ohr, whose marbled bisque vessels still feel ahead of their time, anchors the show in American ceramic traditions. Brigitte Penicaud and Jean-François Thierion treat ceramic surfaces as painterly fields. Taken together, the works are bound by an unrelenting devotion to the muddy, instinctual process of making.
Until September 13
9. “Melange!” at Cristina Grajales Gallery | Tribeca
“Mélange!” pays tribute to the personal act of collecting, bringing together contemporary works and archival gems in a dense, lived-in installation. Highlights include Randy Polumbo’s glowing glass-and-aluminum floral sculpture Nymph, Betil Dagdelen’s woven Peacock dining chairs and satin Loominaire lamps, and historical pieces like Luigi Colani’s 1973 porcelain sake pots and Jay Milder’s 1963 oil painting Subway Runners. Anchored by a collection that gallerist Cristina Grajales has amassed over decades, the show offers a unique look at the layered narratives that emerge when objects accumulate through affection as opposed to strict curation.
Until October 3