What happens when abstract art gets inventive, playful, even rebellious? A handful of current exhibitions offer compelling answers. Painting in Space brings together four titans of abstraction — Al Held, Elizabeth Murray, Judy Pfaff, and Frank Stella — whose visions of space, flatness, and opticality are as radical now as they were decades ago. Anish Kapoor’s early pigment sculptures at the Jewish Museum also pushed boundaries and set the stage for the monumental artworks for which he’s best known today. These creators laid the groundwork for later generations of artists, including Luz Carabaño, whose quiet, dreamy paintings are almost hypnotic.
If abstraction isn’t your preference, check out An Incomplete Haunting and Designing Motherhood. Both look back at important histories, the first focusing on how past politics shape us today and the second on how product design plays a part in parenting. —Natalie Haddad, Reviews Editor
Singing In Unison, Part 12: Painting In Space
Art Cake, 214 40th Street, Sunset Park, BrooklynThrough December 7
Judy Pfaff, “Es Possible” (1989), painted wiggle board and steel (photo courtesy Art Cake)
“Even now, when they’ve been inducted into the canon of American abstraction, it’s clear that [the artists] relentlessly pursued their own trajectory.” —John Yau
Read the review.
Luz Carabaño: currents
Hoffman Donahue, 99 Bowery, 2nd Floor, Lower East Side, ManhattanThrough December 20
Luz Carabaño, “estrellón” (2025) (photo Natalie Haddad/Hyperallergic)
A quick glance at Luz Carabaño’s oil paintings could lead someone to dismiss them as lightweight crowd pleasers. Their convenient sizes, most ranging from tiny to merely small, and sweet, muted palettes make them almost too charming. But spend more time with them and their complexity unfolds. The artist works on canvases that are just a little irregular, like a rectangle drawn with an unsteady hand, undulating subtly. Nothing about the works seeks to greedily grab attention. Instead, their smooth, luminous surfaces, stained with amorphous dots and lines, become ever more hypnotic. In her 2023 Hyperallergic review, Renée Reizman likened them to “nebulae, swamps, or glazed confections.” Here, the hazy sheen of “estrellón” (2025) combines with its pale blue and peach palette and soft radiating beams for something that seems far bigger than its five by five-and-a-half inches; its lustrous light appears almost divine. Similarly, the cloud-like forms in the minty green and white “cruce” (2025) evoke a world on the cusp of memory. Sit with the exhibition for long enough and you might feel like you’re dreaming. —NH
Anish Kapoor: Early Works
Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, ManhattanThrough February 1, 2026
Anish Kapoor at the Jewish Museum in New York City (photo Hrag Vartanian)
“[Kapoor] acknowledged that embracing one’s Jewish identity while opposing Israel’s catastrophic destruction of Gaza in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attacks evoked complicated feelings.” —Aaron Short
Read the article.
An Incomplete Haunting
601Artspace, 88 Eldridge Street, Lower East Side, ManhattanThrough February 22, 2026
Mark Tribe, “The Liberation of Our People: Angela Davis” (1969/2008) (photo Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)
“One notable … emphasis in this show is on recreations and reenactments, suggesting that there are more impactful ways to tell the truth than simply recounting what happened” —Lisa Yin Zhang
Read the review.
Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births
Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, Columbus Circle, ManhattanThrough March 15, 2026
Refuse bin containing recalled items dating from 1972 to the present (photo Julie Schneider/Hyperallergic)
“[The exhibition] illuminates how design shapes diverse experiences of parenthood, from navigating fertility and conception to pregnancy, birth, and postpartum life.” —Julie Schneider
Read the review.
Tagged: New York
Natalie Haddad
Natalie Haddad is Reviews Editor at Hyperallergic and an art writer and historian. Natalie holds a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the University of California San Diego and focuses on World... More by Natalie Haddad
Lisa Yin Zhang
Lisa Yin Zhang is Associate Editor at Hyperallergic, based in Queens, New York. More by Lisa Yin Zhang
John Yau
John Yau is an award winning poet, critic, curator, and publisher of Black Square Editions. He has published over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and art criticism. More by John Yau
Julie Schneider
When Julie Smith Schneider isn’t writing and editing, she’s carrying on her family’s pun tradition, making custom GIFs, or scheming in her cozy art studio. Keep up with her latest projects on Instagram. More by Julie Schneider
Aaron Short
Aaron Short is a Brooklyn-based journalist covering politics, criminal justice, real estate, the environment, and the arts. His work has appeared in New York Magazine, the New York Post, The Daily Beast,... More by Aaron Short
