BY ELISA CAROLLO
As the city’s art scene hits its springtime high, these ten standout exhibitions—from Tribeca to Chelsea—are setting the season’s tone.
The city that never sleeps is gearing up for a frenzied month packed with art fairs of all sizes, along with a heady list of major auctions, and blue-chip venues and emerging outposts alike are unveiling some of their strongest exhibitions of the year, timed to open with Frieze, TEFAF, and their ilk. Across the Upper East Side stalwarts, Chelsea powerhouses and Tribeca’s fast-rising scene, we’ve rounded up ten must-see gallery shows that channel the energy and ambition of the season.
Thalita Hamaoui: Nascer de Terra
May 1-June 14, 2025
Moving intuitively across the canvas, Thalita Hamaoui uses light and color as conduits to engage with the mystery of creation. In a process that verges on alchemy, she channels pigments into evocations of nature’s blooming energies, oscillating between magmatic intensity and lighter, more organic terrains. While her richly layered canvases remain primarily abstract, shaped by an organically alternating rhythm of energetic marks, expressive strokes, and gestural swells of color, they also evoke lush tropical landscapes. Clusters of thick brushstrokes suggest overflowing gardens or blooming vistas, infused with a vital spark that ignites the perpetual cycle of creation, transformation, decay and renewal.
Moving between the spirit of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, the saturated hues of East Asian painting traditions and the uniquely Brazilian influence of the Tropicália movement of the late 1960s, Hamaoui succeeds in creating compositions that are at once vibrant and glowing with internal light and energy. Titled “Nascer de Terra”—which translates literally to ‘born of the earth’ or ‘earthrise’—Hamoui’s U.S. debut solo exhibition presents a new body of work that intertwines generational memory and folklore into imagined geographies, alive with the vital pulse of tropical nature.
