Frieze New York 2025 delivered bold ideas, compelling visuals, and fresh perspectives. Here are the standout moments that made the fair unforgettable.
Now that Frieze New York 2025 has wrapped, with the final visitors departing The Shed on May 11th, it’s the perfect moment to reflect on the fair’s standout presentations. From compelling visuals to daring installations, here’s what resonated most and lingered in our minds long after the booths came down.
Christine Sun Kim – All Day All Night
Whitney Museum, NYC | Through July 6, 2025
Christine Sun Kim’s first major survey turns silence into a visual spectacle. The Deaf artist “utilizes sound, language, and the complexities of communication” to create witty, poignant works. In the Whitney’s galleries she’s drawn musical notation across walls and even installed giant red balloon arms reaching out to touch a boulder – a playful sign of how American Sign Language sounds in her mind. It’s cerebral yet cool, inviting fashion-minded viewers to experience art that speaks volumes without making a sound.
Gray Gallery – Judy Ledgerwood & Leon Polk Smith
This two-person booth is a masterclass in color, pattern, and pedigree. Judy Ledgerwood’s canvases pop with “unapologetically feminine” pinks and bold floral-esque motifs, riffing on quilting and textile design. Across from her, mid-century icon Leon Polk Smith offers cool, “gently warped geometries” in primary hues. It’s a vibrant conversation between generations – think of it as a sartorial clash of prints and minimalism. The combo feels fresh yet timeless, much like pairing a classic vintage piece with a neon new-season accessory.
Galerie Sultana – Jean Claracq, Jesse Darling, Benoît Piéron & P. Staff
Paris’s Galerie Sultana brought a sharp, next-gen edge with this group of four rising artists. Their works share a subtle rebellion – each explores how marginalized bodies clash with society’s structures. Jean Claracq’s diminutive, hyper-detailed paintings capture solitary youth in digital-age scenes (a bit of street style and smartphone glow included). P. Staff and Jesse Darling inject punk humor and raw vulnerability through mixed-media pieces that confront norms. The booth feels like an underground fashion editorial – intimate, provocative, and unafraid to challenge the status quo.
James Cohan – Tuan Andrew Nguyen
At James Cohan’s booth, artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen transforms war remnants into something eerily beautiful. His hanging kinetic sculptures – crafted from actual bomb fragments – spin like metallic mobiles, “moving in response to air and sound” as if imbued with new life. Set against deep-blue walls, oxidized shell casings form dragon-scale patterns, blending trauma with mythology. The result is meditative and strong, much like a couture piece made from upcycled materials: history reworked into art that’s quietly powerful and defiantly elegant.
Tina Kim Gallery
Tina Kim Gallery’s presentation is a textile-lover’s dream. Centered on women artists across generations, the booth highlights how fabric and craft can be utterly cutting-edge. From Pacita Abad’s vibrant “trapunto” quilt painting to Ghada Amer’s drippy embroidered bronze sculpture, every piece reframes traditional needlework as high art. The palette is rich – indigo dyes, golden threads, blood-red yarns – giving the space a tactile warmth. Think of it as the art fair’s equivalent of a luxe fashion capsule: diverse textures, global influences, and a fresh take on heritage techniques.
Mendes Wood DM – Kishio Suga’s Sliced Stones
This São Paulo–based gallery made a zen-like splash with Kishio Suga’s installation of bisected boulders. Eight hefty granite stones lie cleaved in perfect halves, a minimal intervention that speaks volumes. Suga, a Mono-ha pioneer, “incorporates industrial materials… to create conceptual sculptures,” and here he bridges 1960s Japanese minimalism with Brazilian modernism in one stroke. The rugged rocks, sourced from Brazil and precisely sliced, anchor the booth like a meditative sculpture garden. Flanking them are a colorful textile wall-hanging by Sonia Gomes and dreamy landscapes by Antonio Obá, adding a dash of tropical flavor to the austerity. It’s a perfect East-meets-South mix – organic, philosophical, and effortlessly chic.
Pace Gallery – Adam Pendleton & Lynda Benglis
Pace Gallery opted for a cross-generational duet that had VIPs buzzing. Rising star Adam Pendleton’s bold black-and-white paintings hung alongside veteran sculptor Lynda Benglis’s gleaming metal pours, creating a striking visual conversation. Pendleton’s graphic text-infused canvases and Benglis’s curvy, metallic forms unexpectedly echo each other in texture and rhythm – a dialogue of edge and elegance. The pairing felt “thoughtful” and paid off, with multiple works snapped up early. In fashion terms, it’s like mixing avant-garde streetwear with classic haute couture – and absolutely nailing the look.
Gagosian – Jeff Koons’s Hulk Elvis Trio
Never one to be outdone, Gagosian went full Koonsian spectacle. The mega-gallery’s booth featured Jeff Koons’s three monumental Hulk Elvis sculptures – shiny, hulking mashups of the Incredible Hulk carrying tubas, organs, and inflatable toys. Koons himself masterminded everything from the art to the immersive vinyl backdrop splashed with comic-book colors. The result? A “bombastic display of crowd-catching Pop playfulness” that practically begged for Instagram. One of the three musical Hulk sculptures reportedly sold for at least $3 million shortly after Frieze New York 2025 opened its doors to VIPs, further amplifying the buzz. It’s high kitsch and high art colliding – much like a wild runway show, you can’t look away and you know everyone will be talking about it.
Hauser & Wirth
Blue-chip gallery Hauser & Wirth delivered a booth that felt like a museum sneak-preview. They spotlighted new works by Rashid Johnson – whose Guggenheim show is the toast of the town – and Lorna Simpson, set to open a major Met exhibition. Johnson’s Soul Painting “The Jungle” layers abstract gestures with urban grit (imagine graffiti meets fine art, with an expanse of rich blues and blacks). Simpson’s Vista is moody and cool: a large canvas of an icy mountain vista in midnight-blue, as evocative as a couture gown in velvet. Together, their art balances strength and subtlety, much like the best fashion – statements that resonate without screaming.
Gordon Robichaux at Frieze New York: Jenni Crain
Gordon Robichaux | Through June 15, 2025
One of the fair’s most touching moments comes courtesy of Gordon Robichaux’s tribute to the late Jenni Crain (1991–2021). In the Focus section, the gallery staged a mini-retrospective of Crain’s quietly poetic sculptures and paintings – minimalist pieces in wood, glass, and wax that speak in whispers. Back at their downtown space, they even realized the final large-scale work she designed, a lattice-like wood structure, fulfilling her last vision. It’s “the largest display of her mature work,” highlighting Crain’s fascination with architecture, design, and memory. The presentation exudes a somber elegance (imagine a perfectly tailored black dress with an unexpected, artful cut). For the fashion-minded, Crain’s oeuvre is a reminder that restraint can be profoundly chic, and legacy is always in style.
