6 Must-See Solo Gallery Shows in November

1. Laurent Grasso at Sean Kelly, New York

Constructing imaginary worlds in cinema, painting, sculpture, and new media, Laurent Grasso references the past and the present to create a vision of the future. Two recent films get top billing in the enigmatic exhibition “Artificialis,” his sixth solo show with the gallery, while related works in other media play strong supporting roles. Based between New York and Paris, the multidisciplinary Marcel Duchamp Prize-winning artist takes an interest in science and artistic exploration to new heights by merging the imagery of realistic realms captured by advanced technologies with faithful graphic creations of virtual domains.

His colorful ARTIFICIALIS film portrays a surreal world through scenes from existing nature and science-fiction scenarios. At the same time, his black-and-white documentary-style Orchid Island film depicts a levitating black triangle eerily traveling over untouched terrain in Taiwan. Spectacular paintings of floral mutations on palladium-leaf-covered wood from his Future Herbarium series accompany ARTIFICIALIS, while breathtaking landscapes from his ongoing Studies into the Past series (inspired by the Hudson River paintings of Frederic Edwin Church) complement Orchid Island. Sculptural clouds and flames in neon and precious metals, along with a strange spinning doubled-headed flower on a framed LED screen, complete the enchanting exhibition, which leaves visitors with an unsettling yet fascinating view of the future.

Through December 21

2. Hannah van Bart at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York

Painting atmospheric pictures, Hannah van Bart curiously conveys the psychological states of her imaginary sitters, a poetic understanding of objects, and an impassioned connection to nature in the eighteen engaging canvases on view in her exhibition “Inner Homeland,” the painter’s seventh solo presentation with the gallery.

Informed by a semi-realistic drawing style and painterly mark-making, her poetic portraits, sensitive still lives, and emotional landscapes capture the mood, spirit, and aura of her sublime subjects. From hazy portrayals of rosy-cheeked, stylishly dressed people from the past to romantic renderings of old boots and tea cups and sketchy scenes of forests, farmland, and houses, the Amsterdam-based artist pays homage to both Rembrandt and Van Gogh while creating a way of painting with distinctive outlines, repeated patterns, and layered brushwork that’s very much her own.

Through November 16

3. Danny Moynihan at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York

After graduating from London’s Slade School of Fine Art in 1977, Danny Moynihan had a promising profession as a painter, exhibiting in London and Los Angeles before taking a hiatus from showing to pursue curatorial, film, and writing projects. The child of two British artists, Moynihan had been around art long before starting a creative career. Initiating a series of cave paintings after moving to New York in 2016, the series slowly evolved to incorporate fleshy body parts, abnormal animals, bones, and teeth. Taking Cezanne’s masterful paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire (an area in the South of France that the young Moynihan had grown up around ) as his point of departure for each of his surreal landscapes, he used the serene setting as his primordial mud.

The recent paintings in the exhibition “In Praise of Limestone” (the title comes from a W.H. Auden poem) capsulize Moynihan’s extensive knowledge of art into a powerful series of mythological canvases. Rock formations morph into mounds of flesh, prehistoric beasts, and corporal remains. Layered in various degrees of expressive and refined brushwork, his visceral landscapes attract and hold the eye while a rush of art historical references flashes through the viewer’s mind. Highly original yet richly referential, Moynihan’s otherworldly paintings seem as old as time—most likely because it’s time that, in reality, he’s capturing on canvas.

Through November 30

4. Firelei Báez at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles

In her first solo exhibition since joining the gallery in 2023, Firelei Báez presents paintings of women, plant life, and textiles overlaid on reproductions of historical maps and documents printed on canvas. Related to the broader history of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, the ground images define the boundaries of the ancient world, trade routes across the Caribbean region, and parts of the Americas inhabited by Indigenous populations, while the overlays represent forces that bring about changes in the ways of thinking about issues of identity and interactions with people of color.

The key character in bringing about change is the “ciguapa,” a mythological mountain creature from Dominican folklore. A female trickster, the magical being is depicted with blue, red, and brown skin, flowing flowers, and feathery forms covering her nude body. Báez imaginatively illustrates legs surreally merged with lush plant life and renders hair fantastically woven into twisting shapes decorated with jewel-like arms. Informed by an interest in cartography, folklore, feminism, and science fiction, Báez’s disruptive ciguapa figures, along with her more sublime portrayals of exotic objects, provide thought-provoking perspectives on power and oppression—one that’s meant to help us navigate the past and present while refashioning the narrative for the future.

Through January 5

5. Florian Krewer at Michael Werner Gallery, Beverly Hills

An edgy German figurative painter, Florian Krewer apprenticed as a house painter before studying architecture in Cologne for three years and finally earning a degree in fine arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a master student of Peter Doig. Widely exhibited and collected, the New York-based artist returns for his sixth solo show with the gallery and his first in Los Angeles, presenting a new series of canvases capturing the chaos of urban life. Constructing narratives exploring masculinity, anxiety, and desires, Krewer paints the people he confronts in his travels while chronicling their shared experiences.

Employing vibrant colors that add energy to his depicted scenes, the paintings in his exhibition “strike the dust” portray masked figures in street garb hitting the late-night scene, tattooed characters giving DIY haircuts, hipsters lost in their audio realms, lonely drifters living on the brink, and hand-cuffed delinquents being detained by the long arm of the law. Taking a walk on the wild side, Krewer colorfully pictures the urban underbelly—making it look inviting and exciting but not without risk.

Through November 16

6. Vicky Colombet at Fernberger, Los Angeles

A French-American artist who studied law at the Sorbonne before turning to graphic design and then to painting and other fine art mediums, Vicky Colombet has become best known for her abstract, process-oriented monochromatic and bi-chromatic canvases. Inspired by philosophy, physics, and poetry, the meditative paintings in “Flying Back Home,” her first solo show on the West Coast and first one with the Los Angeles gallery, are created with raw pigments, which she experimentally mixes with various solvents and thoughtfully applies to the linen canvas with brushes made of goat and squirrel hair. Part of her sublime Pils et Paysage (Folds and Landscape)”series, the mesmerizing abstractions dynamically capture the movement of the ocean waves, viewed from high above on journeys over the Atlantic Ocean on countless flights between Paris and New York and the other way around.

Through December 21