The 32nd edition of the Armory Show opened at the Javits Center in New York for VIP preview hours, featuring approximately 230 participating galleries, a revised floorplan, and an earlier 10 a.m. start time for its late-September schedule.
The Bottom Line
- Fair Expansion & Layout: The 2026 edition shifts to the end of September at the Javits Center, introducing a new floorplan that places the Focus section near the main entrance and distributes the Solo section throughout the venue.
- Material-Driven Highlights: Galleries are emphasizing deep historical archives, textile experimentation, and archival preservation, ranging from John Shen’s four-year CRT installation at Praise Shadows to Zoë Pulley’s family textile translations at Superposition Gallery.
- Thematic Focus: Curated sections like the Focus program—overseen by Museum of Modern Art Fort Worth curator María Elena Ortiz—turn significant attention toward Caribbean art and cross-generational memory.
The New Floorplan and Earlier Hours at the Javits Center
The Armory Show returned to New York for its 32nd edition, welcoming VIP visitors to the Javits Center under a noticeably more deliberate pace than in previous years. Running through Sunday, the fair features more than 230 galleries exhibiting across an overhauled floorplan. This year’s layout strategically relocates the Focus section immediately to the left of the main entrance while scattering the Solo presentations across the wider expanse of the venue. The scheduling shift—moving away from the post-Labor Day slot to late September, combined with an earlier 10 a.m. opening time—created distinct pockets of uncrowded viewing throughout the morning sessions.
According to fair reports, visitor flow congregates naturally around the seating benches facing the Platform section, while café lines remained minimal during peak afternoon hours. Within this expansive footprint, specific solo and material-driven booths stand out for their rigorous engagement with personal archives, cultural history, and analog experimentation.
Archival Interventions and Material Exploration at Praise Shadows and Re.Riddle
Among the standout presentations is Boston-based gallery Praise Shadows, which exhibits a haunting work by John Shen currently on loan from the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum’s decennial exhibition. Titled After Image (2024), the piece consists of a 14-inch CRT television left powered on continuously for four years. The monitor permanently burns an image of the artist’s mother onto the screen, captured shortly before his birth. The installation incorporates a 48-minute video documenting Shen undergoing a psychological Thematic Apperception Test administered off-camera by his wife, linking themes of psychoanalysis, Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, and the prolonged physical separation from family during the pandemic.
Shen also displays direct positive photographs produced using a custom camera constructed from approximately 28,000 black cocktail straws. Speaking about the technique, Shen explained that his works abstract familiar subjects—such as a floral arrangement from his “Bouquet” series—into analog pixelation resembling modernist dance sequences. Directly across the aisle, Re.Riddle presents a delicate solo exhibition by Summer Mei Ling Lee. The focal point features When Fox is a Thousand (2026), a commission for the Museo delle Culture di Milano for the Winter Olympics, utilizing Sumi ink painted onto hanging gauze strips to evoke a snow blizzard.
Mapping Caribbean Art and Generational Memory in the Focus Section
The Focus section, organized by Museum of Modern Art Fort Worth curator María Elena Ortiz, anchors much of the fair’s regional and cultural exploration. PATRON presents a solo booth by Jamaican artist Simon Benjamin, centered on a freestanding wooden structure modeled after a traditional Caribbean fish pot. Benjamin’s installation incorporates paintings, sculpture, and video that examine historical extraction, maritime culture, and geological sampling through core-like sculptures composed of cornmeal, sand, and resin.
Parallel explorations of Caribbean identity emerge at Perrotin, featuring Kathia St. Hilaire. Drawing from her Haitian heritage and South Florida upbringing, St. Hilaire utilizes printmaking, painting, and collage to address migration, resistance, and the 1960s Haitian literary movement Spiralism. Her process involves repeatedly printing, sanding away, and rebuilding surfaces to mirror historical cycles of trauma and transformation.
Historical Assemblages and Textile Archives Across New York
Magenta Plains marks its 10th anniversary by spotlighting a suite of assemblage works by the late Haitian artist Paul Gardère, covering the period from 1996 to 2000. Following a pivotal 1993 residency at the Fondation Claude Monet in Giverny, Gardère’s practice shifted toward complex framing devices and assemblage techniques. Among these, Voyage to Ile de France (2000) highlights the artist’s structural division of narrative space.
Meanwhile, Superposition Gallery introduces Brooklyn-based artist Zoë Pulley in her New York solo debut. Pulley’s work draws from the personal archive of her grandmother, Philadelphia fashion designer Sandra Olivia Moon Hightower. By utilizing image transfer, collage, and text on large-scale textiles, Pulley examines how Black creative histories are preserved and reconstructed across generations.
| Artist | Gallery | Section | Notable Work/Medium |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Shen | Praise Shadows | General | After Image (CRT monitor installation and straw-pixel photographs) |
| Summer Mei Ling Lee | Re.Riddle | Solo | When Fox is a Thousand (Sumi ink on hanging gauze) |
| Simon Benjamin | PATRON | Focus | Mixed media installation centered on Caribbean maritime culture |
| Kathia St. Hilaire | Perrotin | General | Printmaking, painting, and collage exploring Haitian history |
| Paul Gardère | Magenta Plains | General | Assemblage works from 1996–2000 |
| Zoë Pulley | Superposition Gallery | Presents (Booth P10) | Large-scale textile works utilizing family fashion archives |
The Evolving Fall Arts Programming in New York
The 2026 edition of the Armory Show runs through Sunday at the Javits Center, establishing its late-September timeline as a fixture of the city’s cultural calendar.
