Galleries Now: February Gallery Guide

With the winter freeze still upon us in Manhattan, escape the cold with this season’s extraordinary gallery exhibitions in Chelsea and beyond. Featuring colorful contemporary works that inspire joy and meditation, we are thrilled to share the top gallery shows throughout New York to see now.

CHELSEA

NIGHT at DC Moore

Nearly forty early 20th-century and contemporary artists interpret the depth of thoughts, visions, and emotions inspired by nighttime in this beautiful group show. This moody and evocative exhibition features the work of Milton Avery, Romare Bearden, Theresa Daddezio, David Driskell, Chie Fueki, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Jacob Lawrence, Carrie Moyer, and many others as these artists provide unique meditations on this subject, each work different from the next.

Through February 7

535 West 22nd Street

Joyce Kozloff, the days and hours and moments of our lives, 2007. Courtesy of DC Moore.

Dan Flavin: Grids at David Zwirner

Experience walking into the light that bathes the room, the space, and the walls in color, as David Zwirner’s galleries are illuminated by the iconic Dan Flavin grids. The first focused examination of Flavin’s brightly-lit grid works, this exhibition brings together monumental works from the Estate of Dan Flavin as well as loans from important collections. Dynamic and historical, Grids includes precise recreations Flavin’s installation of his grids in several major exhibitions during his lifetime.

Through February 21

537 West 20th Street

Lynn Geesaman at Yancey Richardson

An evocative exhibition spanning the entirety of Lynn Geesaman’s career, this exhibition of painterly-non-paintings serves as a captivating reminder of the inextricable relationship between man and nature. Atmospheric and poetic, Geesaman’s dreamy photographs—large color prints and rarer black and white works—present moody scenes that call attention to the artificial nature of these landscapes. These beautiful, languid works offer a serene escape from the city around us and are captivating in their construction.

Through February 28

525 West 22nd Street

Lynn Geesaman, Avery Island, Louisiana, 1996. Courtesy of Yancey Richardson.

Eleanor Johnson + Lydia Makin at Harper’s

In the two-artist exhibition now on view at Harper’s Books, bodies tangle together in motion before dissolving into wonderful abstraction. The work of British artists Eleanor Johnson and Lydia Makin present tangling forms in a dynamic push-and-pull as a crescendo of painterly action bursting forth into view. These monumental works reference and evoke Old Master paintings but with a fresh and modern twist and solidify both Johnson and Makin as two great young artists whose careers should be watched.

Through February 7

512 West 22nd Street

Eleanor Johnson, Bear Hug, 2025. Courtesy of Harper’s.

Rob Pruitt: Breathing Room at 303 Gallery

With art reflecting our collective mood and subconscious desires, walking into contemporary star Rob Pruitt’s new exhibition at 303 feels like escaping into an alternative reality where time is marked by color and light. Featuring time-based works from Pruitt’s ongoing investigation into the spectral gradient, this exhibition presents colorful works installed throughout the gallery in a breadth of scales to capture various durations of time.

Through March 7

555 West 21st Street

Susan Dory: Inner Weather at Winston Wächter

Susan Dory’s joyful explorations of color, transparency, and form will warm your souls this winter. The Seattle-based painter’s radiant new works combine acrylic paint with a transparent varnish to produce a luminous, “seeing through” effect that suggests inherent dynamism and transformation, inspiring an unmistakable feeling of optimism that uplifts your spirit, even in this freezing New York February.

Through February 21

530 West 25th Street

Susan Dory, Alazne, 2025

Hilda Palafax: De Tierra y Susurros at Sean Kelly

The mystical and enigmatic paintings and sculptural reliefs of Mexican artist Hilda Palafox explore a metaphoric and visual language rooted in Latin American folklore and ecofeminist thought. Weaving between the emotional, subconscious, domestic, and natural worlds, these other-worldly works brilliantly reflect upon colonialism, spirituality, and the relationship between humans and the earth. Addressing humankind’s occupation of the land and what it means for the natural world, this thought-provoking, imaginative exhibition is not to be missed this season.

Through February 21

475 Tenth Avenue

Nicolas Party: Dead Fish at Karma

Within the contemporary art world over the last five years, there has been a notable trend of artists working in a small scale. Though these works are more intimate in size, they are no less significant or lesser in value than their larger counterparts. Small-scale works have a long and stories art historical tradition and can be just as impactful as large works.

One of the best shows of captivating small paintings this season is an exhibition by the renowned Swiss artist Nicolas Party at Karma. With “Dead Fish,” Party re-creates his own earlier works as well as those of Old Masters using his literally-brilliant oil-on-copper painting practice—attesting to Party’s skill as one who is recreating the practice of painting altogether.

Through February 14

549 West 26th Street

Nicolas Party, Landscape (Copper Version), 2025. Courtesy of Karma.

Marcia Marcus: Mirror Image at Olney Gleason

A truly singular and formidable talent, the work of Marcia Marcus (1928-2025) was rediscovered and given newly-found attention and visibility a few years ago. The first solo exhibition of her work since 2017, Mirror Image presents Marcus’s painting that span 1964-1994. These wonderful works across self-portraiture, still-life, landscape, and architectural painting demonstrate Marcus’s wonderful capabilities and is not to be missed, as this wonderful artist is posthumously a name to know in contemporary art today.

Through February 14

509 West 27th Street

DOWNTOWN

Gregor Hildebrandt: Blau im Gedächtnis (Blue in Memoriam) at Perrotin

Inspired by the interior windows of one of West Berlin’s most iconic landmarks, Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Gregor Hildebrandt’s latest exhibition at Perrotin transforms the space as he transposes the motifs of stained-glass windows into a kaleidoscope of small vinyl record paintings throughout the gallery. This immersive exhibition champions the power of scale—from small, individual elements to a monumental, consuming installation. The German artist expertly ties together fine art and music with this powerful use of Perrotin’s exhibition space.

Through February 18

130 Orchard

Jemima Murphy: Wild Reveries at Anat Egbi

One of today’s most exciting emerging artists, Jemima Murphy creates “reimagined landscapes” that shift between a study of the natural world and of the textured qualities of paint. In her first solo exhibition in New York, Murphy dripping floral motifs layer across her canvas, in an impressive and pouring field. These vibrant works are one to keep an eye on as Murphy develops her practice—we will be watching!

Through February 28

372 Broadway

Jemima Murphy, Buds of May, 2025, courtesy of Anat Egbi

Shaunté Gates: The Night Before: Poppies & Parachutes at Marc Strauss

For his first solo exhibition at Marc Strauss, the Washington, D.C.-born and based artist Shaunté Gates makes an unforgettable statement about the power of visual storytelling. With his complexly-layered pieces composed of printed media, personal photographs, drawings, tissue paper, and more, memories, film scenes, moments in history, and architectural elements (no doubt inspired by the statues and columns throughout Gates’ hometown of D.C.) layer and intersect. Together, these powerful scenes offer a challenging yet hopeful meditation on the role of myths in society.

Through February 28

57 Walker Street

Shaunté Gates, The Messenger, The Archer, The Lover no. II, 2026, courtesy of Marc Strauss

Charlotte Edey: Corner/Fold at James Cohan

With Charlotte Edey’s first solo exhibition in New York, the London-based artist offers dream-like expanses that combine pastel, embroidery, beadwork, stained glass, and woodworking. These multi-media works explore architectures of the interior, both domestic and bodily, resulting in elusive works that shimmer, shift, and change in the light. Accompanying these wall pieces are three floor-based stained glass “wishing wells” that invite viewers to peer down and be entranced in childlike wonder.

Through February 14

52 Walker Street

Charlotte Edey, Fold above fold, a surging mase!, 2025

UPTOWN

Stephanie Temma Hier: Swan Song at Anton Kern

One of the most exciting and original artists working today, Stephanie Temma Hier works between clay and oil, creating paintings, sculptures, and something in between that subverts our traditional expectations of her medium to create totally-unique interpretations of art history, cinema, and contemporary culture. Whimsical and surreal, her new exhibition at Anton Kern is composed of oil paintings set within hand-sculpted ceramic frames, ceramic and resin-encased drawings, and a surreal tableau of maquettes and sketches. Placing familiar household objects in new contexts, these fascinating works push boundaries in every way: that between artistic mediums, the flat and the 3-D, and the decorative and the functional.

Through February 21

16 East 55th Street

Stephanie Temma Hier, Hold this position (left), 2025. Courtesy of Anton Kern Gallery.