Some paint ghosts. One sculpts with hair. Another is late 60s and one of the more intriguing “new” talents around. All six are positioned for career-making openings in September. In these artists’ hands, figuration isn’t a retreat but an insurgency. It isn’t nostalgic or safe or optically rote. It’s personal, political, pictorially alive, pushing against the flatness of photo-based realism and ultra-on-message art. Some of these artists I’ve followed for years; others are new to me. But each delivers that jolt of recognition. Karen Barbour makes abstract dot-filled dreamscapes that hover between the psychedelic and the childlike. María Berrío’s collaged visions are both intricate and otherworldly, dreamed then chiseled. Ana Cláudia Almeida paints with spectral precision; colors blur, as if you’re seeing underwater. Adebunmi Gbadebo works with human hair, indigo dye, and timeless forms to sculpt memory and Black history, materializing grief and resilience in equal measure. Sasha Gordon’s lush self-portraits are charged with vengeance and vulnerability. Her maniacal technique ravishes. Olivia van Kuiken paints slouched angels, stoned odalisques, girls with deadpan gazes who seem to see something we don’t. That’s true of all emerging artists: They sketch the shape of what’s coming next. Not fully known, already felt. Their work can shift the chemistry of a room and, sometimes, of art itself. —Jerry Saltz
