What not to miss at Frieze New York 2025

NYC’s art world is gearing up for a busy season of fairs anchored by Frieze New York 2025. Taking place 7 to 11 May at The Shed, the fair will showcase more than 65 leading contemporary art galleries from over 25 countries. The buzzy event offers collectors access to coveted blue-chip works by the biggest names in art today, as well as pieces by rising stars of the industry.

As always, Frieze will feature a range of amenities for visitors, including the US debut of Korean luxury beauty brand The Whoo, which is showcasing artwork by three emerging South Korean female artists: Ok Kim, Subin Seol, and Jian Yoo. Nearby, visitors can sip crisp champagne from Ruinart. Continuing its ‘Conversations with Nature’ series, Ruinart has commissioned artist Sam Falls to explore the maison’s commitment to the environment, creating colourful paintings with an assortment of flora that celebrate biodiversity.

To help you navigate the best of the fair, here are the top booths and happenings to see at Frieze New York 2025.

Frieze New York 2025 guide

Mendes Wood DM

To tease Sonia Gomes’ first institutional solo presentation at Storm King Art Center (7 May to 10 November 2025), Mendes Wood DM is exhibiting a new sculpture by the Afro-Brazilian artist. Made in fibre and bronze, the work will offer a glimpse of what visitors can expect from the colourful site-specific installation and survey, ‘Ó Abre Alas!’.

Joining Gomes’ piece in the booth will be Sliced Stones (2018), an installation of cut stones by Kishio Suga, who will also be the subject of an upstate solo show, opening 25 July at Dia Beacon. ‘In 1968, Suga began to make installations from natural and industrial materials,’ Audrey Smith, director of the gallery’s New York location tells Wallpaper*. ‘It was a way to subvert and investigate the “reality” of things at a time of rapid industrialisation and global social turmoil in Japan, but also throughout the world. His work has a particular subversiveness at an art fair.’

Apalazzogallery and Emalin

For their joint presentation, Apalazzogallery and Emalin will feature artists on each gallery’s roster, as well as one they co-represented, Vilnius-based Augustas Serapinas. Recontextualising everyday objects and materials, Serapinas uncovers latent complexities of social hierarchy, memory, and economy. He is particularly interested in highlighting how the design and systems of public spaces can determine how people interact. Serapinas’ works on view will include a blackened roof panel installed onto the booth wall and a floor sculpture consisting of functioning fitness equipment where the artist has replaced the weights with replicas of classical sculptures.

Tina Kim Gallery

In a refreshing break from the historically male-dominated art industry, Tina Kim Gallery is presenting a multigenerational, international selection of women artists. ‘With its roots in post-war Korean art, my programme has evolved to address broader gaps in the field, recognising that there are so many women artists that have been overlooked in their contributions to art history,’ the gallery’s founder, Tina Kim, tells Wallpaper*.

Included in the booth will be several works incorporating textiles in innovative ways, such as Maia Ruth Lee’s Bondage Baggage series (2018-ongoing), which explores migration, displacement, and memory. To make these, Lee first creates net-like bundles of fabric that take inspiration from the personal belongings carried by Nepali migrants, which she paints and dyes with ink. The bundles are then opened to reveal beautiful, abstract designs.

James Cohan

Opting for a solo presentation is James Cohan, which is showcasing sculptures by Tuan Andrew Nguyen that explore the power of memory and narrative to determine history. The works on view incorporate pieces of unexploded ordnances (UXOs) from the Quảng Trị region of central Vietnam, an area that saw the largest aerial bombardment in history.

As is common in Nguyen’s research-based practice, he worked closely with local communities in Vietnam to consider the stories of resilience that land and objects hold. Reconfiguring the UXOs, Nguyen positioned them as objects of healing as opposed to evidence of violence and war. Of note, kinetic sculptures on view will use sound vibrations and air flow to play palliative frequencies the artist determined with a sound healer. Included in these is Tremor (2025), a floor-based mobile that features components of artillery shells repurposed into an elegant balance of brass medallions and a windchime that dangle in the air.

Madragoa

In the Focus Section, young galleries will present solo booths of works by under-appreciated names in the industry. Overseen by curator and writer Lumi Tan and subsidised by Frieze and clothing brand Stone Island, the section helps broaden the scope of the fair with fresher faces and newer names. Among the 12 galleries featured this year is Lisbon’s Madragoa, which will show new oil paintings on wood by Rodrigo Hernández that draw inspiration from Aesop’s ‘The Bat, the Birds and the Beasts’ fable, a story of the bat’s identity crisis in which it must choose between the worlds of beasts and birds. Hernández adds another factor to the equation, introducing flowers to the story.

In addition to helping subsidise booth costs, Stone Island has also created the shirts worn by Frieze staff, which feature a design by Tahir Karmali, whose works are on view in the Focus Section with Management gallery.

Artist Plate Project

On the philanthropic front, a highlight of Frieze will be Artist Plate Project, an exciting collaboration featuring 50 renowned artists’ work on fine-bone china plates produced by Atelier Eighty Eight. Offering visitors a chance to purchase a work of art at an affordable price while also raising funds for Coalition for the Homeless, the plates will be sold for $250 each in editions of 250. One hundred of each edition will be for sale at Frieze, with the rest available through Artware Editions beginning 13 May at 10am EST. This year’s participating artists include Rashid Johnson, Faith Ringgold, and Julian Schnabel. Funds from just one plate can feed over 100 hungry New Yorkers and provide additional resources such as rental assistance and crisis services. The initiative has raised over $7 million since its founding in 2020.

‘This project emerged from a desperate need to raise funds for homeless and low-income New Yorkers during Covid,’ says Michelle Hellman, co-founder and curator of the Artist Plate Project. ‘Unfortunately, the situation has worsened significantly. Tonight, approximately 350,000 individuals will go to bed without a home, in contrast to 58,000 in 2020, when we launched the project. The need is more pressing than ever, and it’s thanks to the artists who generously agree to participate that we’re able to make a meaningful impact.’

Performances

Coinciding with the fair, visitors can experience daily performances as part of Frieze’s robust schedule. ‘Performance has always had a strong presence at Frieze New York, and this year we’ve put it right at the centre – not just within the fair, but across its public spaces,’ Christine Messineo, Frieze’s director of Americas tells Wallpaper*. ‘It feels especially fitting in a city like New York, which has such a rich and radical performance history.’

Among the highlights will be Finnish artist Pilvi Takala’s new piece co-commissioned by Frieze and High Line Art, which was curated by Taylor Zakarin and will take place on the High Line and at The Shed. Details of what audiences will encounter with Takala’s performance, The Pin, will remain a surprise, but the piece, we are told, will be at once playful and spontaneous, pushing the boundaries of social conventions. Messineo calls the performance, ‘a sharp, quietly disruptive piece that questions the unspoken rules that shape public behaviour’.

A full schedule of Frieze’s programming can be found here. Frieze New York 2025 runs 7-11 May