Johnny g mullen: Rehearsals in Movement

Installation View, (photo courtesy of Yanmei Jiang)

Walking into Peninsula gallery, an intimate space in the Two Bridges neighborhood, viewers are greeted with the energetic and punchy paintings in Johnny Mullen’s solo show- rehearsals in movement. Mullen has pinpointed his focus on layering paint, motion, and plays with both transparency and opacity in this new series. With the gallery itself being so intimate, you get a close and personal view of the works, a deeper look that proves very rewarding. Meandering from one painting to the next, each of a consistent size, you get to join mullen on his explorations within each piece. Expanding from his interest in color theory, Mullen has added an expanded investigation of layering and gesture within the pieces.

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Double Vision: One Artist, Two Solo Shows, Double the Stripes

Portrait of the artist, photo courtesy of Elizabeth Haynes

In early September, painter Deborah Zlotsky pulled off what few artists even attempt: two solo shows opening at once, on opposite sides of Manhattan. The Light Gets In filled McKenzie Fine Art on the Lower East Side, while Genealogies took over Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in Chelsea. A double dip in one city, on one calendar page. It might sound like a scheduling accident, yet standing in front of her candy-striped canvases, the simultaneity feels deliberate. Zlotsky thrives on overlap: order brushing against disorder, geometry trembling at its edges, patterns that carry memory while stumbling into the present.

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Maya Perry with introspections within The Moon Takes Shape of an Outsider’s Light

Maya Perry, The moon takes shape of an outsiders light, 2025, Water-Soluble Graphite and Watercolor on canvas, 58 x 62 in., photo courtesy of Taylor Bielecki

Maya Perry’s solo exhibition at RAINRAIN gallery is both tender and powerful, full of tranquility and wonder. It is a conversation on humanness and existence. With the drawings, we see snapshots of thoughts, memories, feelings, and with the paintings we see narratives and longer moments of growing, returning, and becoming. This exhibition navigates the spaces where memory fractures and re-forms, dealing with the complications of the past.

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Comet Eater: Terra Keck at Storage

Installation view of Comet Eater

An occult presence pervades the sylvan scenery of Comet Eater, a solo show from Terra Keck. In these nightswept graphite drawings, trees shimmer and sway. Leaves levitate and glow. Stars or fireflies illuminate ornate paths. Among other sources, Keck hybridizes the ghostly impressions of Anna Atkins’s botanical cyanotypes and the mystic geometry of Hilma af Klint’s paintings.

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Ronit Goldschmidt: Landscapes at Gordon Gallery

Ronit Goldschmidt, Gordon gallery, installation view

Landscapes, Ronit Goldschmidt‘s solo exhibition at Gordon Gallery, is as unpretentious and straightforward as its title. This group of paintings ranges from 6×4 to 23×27-inch panels—tiny but mighty. Their strength derives from the apparent skill of the painter to transport the viewer to a place so specific that it feels familiar. She successfully translates the full spectrum of a real moment by simple means of acrylic or gouache.

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Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface at Fou Gallery

A painting on a wall

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Installation image of Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface, 2025. Photograph by Ken Lee

When Naomi Okubo decides to begin working on one of her enthralling paintings, there is a multistep process that far proceeds the brush gracing the canvas. The careful preparation of materials, digital and physical, allow Okubo to consolidate her thoughts and produce an organic depiction of her personal experience. The authenticity with which this is depicted is a result of the forethought and boundless introspection that she imposes upon herself. It is important to note that the artworks selected for the exhibition Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface currently on view at Fou Gallery, weave a narrative fabric that chronologizes Okubo’s development as a visual artist.

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The Time It Takes to Look: Jaqueline Cedar’s Art of the Almost Seen

Jaqueline Cedar, Dusk, 2024, acrylic on panel, 10”x8”

At Andrew Rafacz, Jaqueline Cedar’s Slide delivers small paintings with big temporal ambition. In her first Chicago solo show, the artist captures time not as a line but a loop—blurred, fragmented, and thick with atmosphere. Figures flicker in and out of clarity; gestures repeat like memories misfiring. The intimacy of scale invites close-contact peering, while layered forms resist quick comprehension. It’s a slow burn of perceptual dissonance, pitched somewhere between deep dreaming and déjà vu. In many ways, Cedar paints observation itself—its rhythms, glitches, and gaps—inviting us to dwell in the space between glancing and seeing.

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Natalia Zourabova: Nightlight at Kaliner Gallery

Installation view

I am meeting Natalia at Kaliner gallery on a steamy day in June. The artist, who arrived here for this milestone exhibition, her first solo in New York, is uncertain when and how she will be able to return home to Israel. The war in Iran was launched just a week after the opening. Stranded away from her family, she remains determined and optimistic. This toughness in the face of chaos is also evident in her artwork. The paintings in Nightlight are vibrant, large, and striking.

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Judith Simonian: The Human Element Huddled and Still

Installation View. Courtesy of JJMurphy Gallery

Judith Simonian’s solo show at JJ Murphy Gallery, poignantly titled The Human Element, Huddled and Still, features her latest paintings from the past few years. At first glance, there is familiarity in each piece – a living room, a still life, part of a ship – but as one starts to look closer, something starts to happen. Within each painting, there is a portal into another world; there are clashing planes and changing scenes that are so seamlessly blended together the viewer’s brain needs some time to catch up. What is particularly astounding about Simonian’s work is that her subject matter is a humble amalgamation of scenes, spaces, and objects one would encounter in everyday life.

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