NEW YORK, NY.- Gagosian will participate in Frieze New York 2026 with a presentation of works by a group of international contemporary artists with diverse approaches to abstraction and nature. The paintings, sculptures, and photographs on view are inspired by colors, forms, and materials found outdoors, exploring our relationship with our environment through interpretations of growth and transformation. Participating artists include Derrick Adams, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Theaster Gates, Cy Gavin, Nan Goldin, Titus Kaphar, Jeff Koons, Rick Lowe, Tyler Mitchell, Sabine Moritz, Giuseppe Penone, Gerhard Richter, Sarah Sze, Adriana Varejão, Mary Weatherford, Stanley Whitney, and Francesa Woodman.
Sarah Sze’s mixed-media painting Badlands (2026) merges collaged imagery including hands and fragments of landscapes and seascapes with streaks and drips of paint, juxtaposing representation and abstraction to address the multiplicity of contemporary experience. Stanley Whitney’s painting Spring Sung (2026) uses blocks and bands of ebullient color and lively brushwork to evoke both seasonal change and the syncopated cadences of jazz. Tyler Mitchell’s Treading II (2026) is a photographic work on a mirrored support that reinforces the reflected elements in its composition. Picturing a swimmer buoyed by colorful balloons, it is concerned with identity, nature, and artifice. Uniting these disparate works, vivid color and repeated patterns channel principles of abstraction that are rooted in natural harmonies and rhythms.
Titled after the Greek myth of Marsyas, Giuseppe Penone’s Marsia (Marsyas) (2025) is a dynamic relief of overlapping cork sheets. Connecting the growth of cork bark to that of skin, one panel is marked with patterns in gold leaf derived from an imprint of Penone’s hand. Carved roughly from wood, and then charred and gilded, Titus Kaphar’s While You Wake . . . (Sentinel 3) (2025) is a portrait bust of the artist’s cousin, part of a sculptural project dedicated to family and close friends he regards as “saints” who have sustained him.
Helen Frankenthaler’s Celebration Bouquet (1962) is a joyous abstraction of a brightly colored bouquet in a horizontal composition that also hints at the pose of a reclining figure. Three photographs by Francesca Woodman dating from c. 1975 to 1980 position the female body with flowers and other plants in enigmatic images that self-consciously subvert tropes that equate women with nature.
Richard Diebenkorn’s untitled gouache from 1952 in blue, green, and red combines Abstract Expressionist methods with aerial views of terrain, following a revelatory cross-country airplane flight. Made with acrylic and collage, Rick Lowe’s painting Untitled (2025) draws from the maplike networks of tabletop domino games to create exploratory mode of abstraction. To create Moby Dick (2026), Sabine Moritz painted with interlaced brushstrokes in a panoply of colors, forming what she considers to be a kind of “psychological landscape.”
In the large-scale canvas Untitled (Reflections) (2026), Cy Gavin interprets the dynamic ripples and shimmering refractions of moving water with fluid painterly gestures. To make Deserto com água (Desert with Water) (2025), Adriana Varejão added plaster to a pair of canvases and allowed them to dry, producing deeply cracked surfaces that recall fissures of parched earth, then applied pale blue oil paint that suggests both flowing water and aqueous glaze.
