Five Shows to See in Chelsea During Frieze New York 2024

May 2, 2024

After the frenzy of the Venice Biennale, the art world will now shift its attention to the Frieze art fair in New York, which opens its doors to VIPs today. It returns to the Shed in Hudson Yards, and will this year have 68 exhibitors.

This location means Frieze attendees will be just a 10-minute walk away from the nearby galleries in Chelsea. While the area’s buzziest show might be the one at Gagosian for Maurizio Cattelan, who is fresh off of his participation in the Venice Biennale’s Holy See Pavilion at the Giudecca Women’s Prison, there are also many other exhibitions worth checking out.

At times, it can feel like there are too many exhibitions on view to know what to do with. ARTnews has selected five to see during Frieze New York.

Tamiko Nishimura at Alison Bradley Projects

Image Credit: © Tamiko Nishimura Courtesy of Alison Bradley

Japanese photographer Tamiko Nishimura has produced images ranging from documentation of avant-garde performances to portraiture. But rather than surveying the whole of her output, this show, her US debut, focuses specifically on her black and white images of women in everyday moments and pictures attesting to the artist’s nomadic journeys across her home country, Southeast Asia, and Europe. To produce these works, Nishimura experimented with long exposures and contrast, lending a haunting quality to pictures of women walking down the street and shopping at stores—subjects which may normally be quotidian, but which in her hands stand out nicely.

Through June 8
Melissa Cody at Garth Greenan

Image Credit: Courtesy of Garth Greenan Gallery

This exhibition showcases 14 pieces by Navajo artist Melissa Cody, whose wildly colored woven works combine Navajo patterns and overlays of geometric shapes. The bold textiles include examples of vivid commercial dyes and the use of classic a Navajo motif symbolizing good fortune recognizable today as a swastika; one even makes a reference to ’80s video game culture through the use of pixelated lettering. In additional to a traditional Navajo loom, Cody recently added a Jacquard machine to her practice, allowing for more complicated and detailed patterns in her exuberant, often playful work. The show coincides with another Cody solo show currently being held at MoMA PS1 in Queens.

Through June 15
Hugh Hayden at Lisson Gallery

Image Credit: © Hugh Hayden, Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

This Dallas-born, New York–based artist is here exploring the notion of privacy in public spaces via an arrangement of metal bathroom stalls, each of which contains an artwork within. Among those artworks are two wooden sculptures of the fairy tale character Pinocchio made of ebony and walnut, as well as a literal ensemble of cast iron melting pots and copper pans. Meanwhile, there’s the hanging sculpture American Gothic tool skeletons (wall), meant as a reference both to Grant Wood’s famed painting of a rural married couple and to Gordon Parks’s picture of a government worker. Hayden’s carefully carved wooden skeletons have a metal shovel, a rake, a hammer, pruning shears, a mop head, a feather duster, a broom, and a plunger instead of hands and feet.

Through August 2
Norberto Roldan at Silverlens

Image Credit: Courtesy of Silverlens

Roldan’s first US solo exhibition assembles textiles that attest to how the Philippines has undergone—and continues to experience—colonialism, totalitarian rule, and geopolitical struggles. But this Filipino artist shows that amid all these challenges, the country’s residents have remained resilient. The works here make use of embroidery, Catholic imagery, religious handkerchiefs, amulets, demonetized coins, traditionally woven fabrics from Indigenous communities, and Chinese blankets sourced from Roldan’s hometown.

Through June 15
Elias Mung’ora at Montague Contemporary

Image Credit: Courtesy of Montgomery Contemporary

Kenyan artist Elias Mung’ora’s new figurative paintings are contemplative interior scenes, each set within the same living room. With its bright colors and washed-out walls, this setting evokes displacement. Many of Mung’ora’s subjects are shown sitting on a pale red couch, but most do not appear relaxed, only weary or focused on the screen in front of them. The paintings draw upon the artist’s own experiences and relationships, as well as his journey to understand his ancestry in the central Kenyan town of Nyeri. Carpets are a recurring motif in several works as a reminder to the viewer of how a sense of home is created both physically and emotionally.

Through June 29