As summer gives way to autumn, New York City once again takes center stage as the global art world gathers to witness a new season of exhibitions. The city’s galleries, long known as incubators for emerging talent and proving grounds for established artists, are alive with shows that challenge, provoke, and inspire. This September, three standout exhibitions offer a striking snapshot of the conversations happening across contemporary art—exploring identity, mythology, religion, and the human condition against the backdrop of a city that never stops reinventing itself.
One of the most anticipated openings is Sasha Gordon’s solo debut at David Zwirner on September 10. Gordon, who has been making waves with her bold and surreal figuration, approaches the body as both symbol and narrative. Her style—at once cartoonishly exaggerated and psychologically incisive—taps into themes of self-perception, race, and gender, while situating those questions within larger narratives of belonging and desire. Her rise has been steady, from strong visibility in Miami during Art Basel week last year to the auction success of her painting Gone Fishing, which cemented her status as one of the most exciting young voices in the art market. With her Zwirner debut, Gordon steps into the international spotlight, her work offering a candid, deeply personal take on identity while resonating broadly with today’s cultural moment.
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Running parallel to Gordon’s debut, Swivel Gallery in Brooklyn opens Ecstasy Protocol, a collaborative exhibition by Dew Kim and Filippo Cegani, also launching September 10. Together, Kim and Cegani create a sensorial installation that reimagines Catholic iconography through the lens of digital spectacle and queer aesthetics. Their work engages directly with the migration of religious imagery into pop culture and online platforms, where ancient symbolism collides with the visual vocabulary of memes, gaming, and viral content. The exhibition challenges viewers to reflect on how traditions transform within a hyper-mediated age, blending sacred forms with the subversive energy of contemporary digital life. For audiences, the show is both irreverent and reverent—unpacking the ways ritual and spirituality are reconfigured in the digital century.
Meanwhile, at Hauser & Wirth, Ambra Wellmann’s Darkling offers an entirely different but equally compelling vision. Wellmann’s paintings plunge viewers into dreamlike atmospheres where lush, painterly color is set against apocalyptic tension. Her compositions evoke sensuality and vulnerability, yet they also carry the weight of existential reflection. With a practice rooted in figuration, Wellmann examines how the human body becomes a site of transformation, fear, and renewal. In Darkling, she bridges mythic overtones with visceral immediacy, crafting an aesthetic world where the intimate and the catastrophic collide. Critics have noted her ability to balance painterly virtuosity with raw emotional energy, making her a standout presence in an increasingly crowded field of contemporary figurative painters.
Taken together, these exhibitions present New York audiences with a dialogue across themes and mediums. Gordon explores the body and identity as symbols in flux; Kim and Cegani rethink religious iconography through digital filters; Wellmann interrogates humanity’s precarious place within lush but destabilized environments. Each, in its own way, grapples with myth, tradition, and technology—whether personal, cultural, or spiritual—bringing viewers into layered conversations about how we understand ourselves and the worlds we inhabit.
The timing of these openings further enhances their resonance. September has long been a peak moment for New York’s cultural calendar. As the city shakes off the languor of summer, its art institutions, auction houses, and independent galleries prepare for a busy fall season filled with fairs, biennials, and marquee solo exhibitions. The influx of collectors, curators, and critics converging on New York this month heightens the visibility of shows like Gordon’s, Wellmann’s, and Ecstasy Protocol, giving them a platform not only to attract audiences but also to shape wider conversations in the art world.
There is also an undercurrent of renewal. Following years of disruption from the pandemic and economic uncertainty, New York’s galleries are reclaiming their role as spaces of experimentation and cultural exchange. The exhibitions on view this September are not merely aesthetic offerings; they are reminders of the city’s capacity to incubate ideas that challenge convention and expand dialogue. Whether through Gordon’s unflinching personal narratives, Kim and Cegani’s critical remix of sacred imagery, or Wellmann’s painterly confrontation with mortality and desire, these shows highlight the resilience and adaptability of the contemporary art scene.
For gallery-goers, the result is an unusually rich start to the season. Walking through these exhibitions, visitors encounter diverse artistic voices probing the boundaries of identity, faith, myth, and technology—all in a city that thrives on tension and reinvention. It is a moment where art reflects the complexities of contemporary life while inviting audiences to imagine new ways of seeing.
As New York enters another autumn of cultural energy, the exhibitions of Gordon, Kim and Cegani, and Wellmann stand out as vital markers of where contemporary art is heading—toward deeper explorations of the self, sharper critiques of cultural institutions, and ever-more inventive uses of form and symbolism. They reaffirm New York’s enduring role as the stage upon which global art trends are launched, tested, and transformed.