8 Artists Having a Breakout Moment This Fall

The fall season is the most charged moment of the art world calendar as museum exhibitions, gallery shows, art fairs, and auctions kick off again after a summer break. From Paris, to London, to New York, high-profile collectors, curators, advisors, and gallerists are perking up their ears for which artists will set the tone for the months ahead.

Artsy scoured an array of fall shows to find the artists who are reaching new levels in their careers, whether that’s showing their work to new audiences or at a major new gallery. Many of the artists on this list have recently signed with new representation or are making their solo debuts in major markets; some are already a few decades into their meaningful careers while others are fresh from art school. For all of them, one thing is clear: they’re in the midst of career-making moments. Here are 8 artists who are having a breakout moment this fall.

B. 1985, Madrid. Lives and works in Madrid.

This fall, all eyes are on Spanish artist Teresa Solar Abboud. Not only has she just secured new representation by Lehmann Maupin (in collaboration with Travesia Cuatro), Abboud also just announced a monumental new sculpture that will be presented during this year’s Frieze Week in London at the Hayward Gallery. The piece, Mother Tongue (2025), will mark the sculptor’s first time working with bronze, as well as her debut with a public U.K. institution. Later this fall she will also mount her first solo presentation in Germany at Kustverein Hannover. Her first solo exhibition with Lehmann Maupin is scheduled for September 2026.

The artist makes drawings and video installations, but she is best known for her large-scale sculptures produced in clay and polished in resin. They interrogate the relationship between humankind and the outermost crust of the earth. The works are composed of organic forms in bright colors. These sculptures’ rough texture contrasts with the smooth propeller-like pastel shapes.

The news comes following a flurry of important institutional moments for Abboud in the last few years. She participated in the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and has had solo presentations at Museo CA2M in Madrid and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in 2024. Last year, Birth of Islands (2024), her major sculpture of two smooth yellow-coated tongue-like figures, was commissioned for New York’s High Line.

B. 1993, Rio de Janeiro. Lives and works in Brooklyn.

Brazilian artist Ana Cláudia Almeida’s show “Over Again” is not only her first major solo exhibition in New York, but also her first time showing with Stephen Friedman Gallery since joining its roster. On view through October 18th, the show features new fabric works, large-scale paintings, and a site-specific installation, all of which engage different media, from plastic, to oil pastels, to video. Though this is her first time showing in New York, her work has been widely exhibited in Brazil and internationally.

Sometimes, her work features expansive brushstrokes of vivid color that fill the entirety of the canvas with thick layers of paint. Other times, she leaves vast portions bare save for a few strategic marks—Almeida’s pieces blend abstraction and materiality. The boundary between different media disintegrates as paintings on fabric and plastic are freed from their stretchers and contorted around the gallery’s columns or hung from the ceiling. By experimenting with form, Almeida signals the importance of breaking from tradition and from patterns that are no longer of use to us.

Earlier this year Almeida received her MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University’s School of Art. She also holds a BA from Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro.

B. 1962, London. Lives and works in London.

Multidisciplinary artist Sonia Boyce DBE RA has spent over 40 years making trailblazing, improvisational performance and visual work that explores the power of voice and questions of identity. She was a part of the early 1980s Black British Arts Movement and became the first Black British artist to be included in the Tate’s collection by 1987—but she’s only now receiving her flowers. This fall, Hauser & Wirth, who announced their representation of Boyce in 2023, presents her first solo show with the gallery: “Improvise with what we have,” on view in New York through October 18th.

Boyce was thrust into the spotlight when she became the first Black British woman to represent Britain at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 with “Feeling Her Way.” The immersive installation and video work was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation.

As part of “Improvise with what we have,” Boyce presents photographic and wallpaper works alongside two new films. In one, Silent Disco (2025), Boyce examines the collective performance of close listening and improvised movements by those in attendance at silent discos. To complement this, Boyce rearranged still images from the film into kaleidoscopic constellations which she presents as wallpaper, muddying the boundary between artwork and documentation. Meanwhile, Carmen (2025), observes the life and work of Guyanese British actress Carmen Munroe through splitscreen video feeds that intertwine her accomplishments with the ongoing impact of her legacy.

B. 1962, Shanghai. Lives and works in Shanghai.

Acclaimed Chinese abstractionist Ding Yi is known for his crosses, an important motif that appears across his work. He started using this symbol without any narrative or intentional meaning, rather he was grounded in the rigorous act of repetition. But as his practice evolved over the course of four decades, Yi began investigating the cosmos, nature, and the universe. Now, Yi’s spiritual works are on view in his new show, “The Road to Heaven,” his inaugural exhibition in London at Lisson Gallery which announced representation of the artist last year. Yi continues to be represented by ShanghART, Galerie Karsten Greve, Timothy Taylor, and Galería RGR.

“The Road to Heaven” is a response to three intense years Yi spent researching ancient scrolls from the Dongba faith in southwestern China. These manuscripts depict the transportation of the soul into the afterlife through pictographs. Yi’s works, made on coarse-fibred Dongba paper with acrylic and colored pencil, reinterpret the most significant of these scripts.

B. 1998, Somers, New York. Lives and works in New York.

An alum of The Artsy Vanguard 2022, Sasha Gordon shot to fame when she made her debut solo museum presentation with “Surrogate Self” at the ICA Miami during Miami Art Week in 2023. That show caught the attention of blue-chip gallery David Zwirner, which now co-represents the artist alongside Matthew Brown. Later this month, David Zwirner’s New York space will present Gordon’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, “Haze,” featuring all new work.

Gordon’s technical prowess and knack for narrative are evidenced in her gauzy, life-like oil paintings that employ her own image as various alter egos to communicate her inner turmoil in horror-film-like fashion. A 2020 graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design, she is the youngest artist signed to Zwirner’s roster, having bypassed the traditional stepping stones that were once considered the expected chutes to art world fame as mega-galleries race to sign young talent. Her work is held in prominent collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hammer Museum, among other institutions. Other recent solo presentations of her work include shows with Stephen Friedman Gallery, Jeffrey Deitch, and Matthew Brown.

B. 1974, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Lives and works in New York.

Korean American abstract painter Suzanne Song has widely exhibited her geometric compositions across the United States and South Korea. Now, a solo exhibition this fall at White Cube in London moves her into blue-chip territory for the first time. Her new body of work, titled “Interfold” and made up of over 20 new canvases, is presented as part of “Inside the White Cube,” the gallery’s series of exhibitions that platform artists on the rise. The show will run through October 3rd at their Mason’s Yard location. Past artists shown as part of this series include Alex Da Corte, Etel Adnan, Senga Nengudi, and Michael Armitage.Song’s layered approach and line-based arrangements takes cues from Minimalism and Op Art to cast dizzying illusions in restrained color palettes. To achieve this disorienting effect, the artist works out the exacting details of the composition in advance, either by way of paper cut-outs or digital tools, ensuring the proportions align in geometric harmony. With these paintings, Song “navigat[es] the balance between control and openness,” as she explained it in the show’s press release.

Song received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University’s School of Art in 2000, and she has previously shown her work in solo and group presentations at spaces including the Drawing Center, the Doosan Art Center, and Gallery Baton, which represents her.

B. 1979, Lincoln, Nebraska. Lives and works in northern Minnesota and Chicago.

Andrea Carlson’s sweeping, multi-paneled tableaus contain traces of classic American landscape painting, including mountain peaks, endless skies, and coniferous trees. However, the similarities end there. As an Indigenous Ojibwe artist, Carlson puts to canvas a chaotic, thrashed, futuristic view of the landscapes of her ancestral homeland on the Grand Portage Band in northern Minnesota. For example, her painting The Buffet (2025) envisions the outcome of meteoric impact, with a colorful table set in its center. This work, along with eight smaller paintings, one sculpture, and another multi-paneled piece, is on view through October 25th at Jessica Silverman gallery, which announced representation of the artist earlier this month.

In addition to this show, Carlson will also be the subject of a major mid-career survey at the Denver Art Museum that is set to open October 5th, as well as a solo show with the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art that will run until early next year. In the past few years, she has also received a string of recent awards and fellowships, such as the 2024 Creative Capital Award. She also co-founded the Center For Native Futures, an all-Indigenous artist-led nonprofit that promotes Indigenous fine arts, putting Carlson on track to become a noted voice on the national stage.

B. 1968, New York. Lives and works in New York