Agora Gallery

10/14/2026

Tomorrow, art and design share the room at Agora Gallery.

The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern, presented in collaboration with furniture design partner Dobrinka Salzman Gallery, brings together five artists whose work draws on the design principles of the mid-century modern movement. Our skylight room has been transformed into an immersive mid-century interior, placing each artist’s work in conversation with a furniture curation by Dobrinka Salzman Gallery.

Featuring works by Yu Cheng, Alli Gerrish, Alexander List, Drew Austin McConnell, and Joshua YeheNara.

✨ Join us for the opening reception tomorrow, Thursday, October 15, from 6–8 PM.

🗓️ On view October 15–November 3, 2026
📍 Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea, New York

We look forward to welcoming you.

10/13/2026

Meet Drew Austin McConnell, a New York City–based artist originally from rural Michigan, whose sculptural paintings begin with concrete. He applies it to wood panels while it is still wet, shaping the surface before it sets.

From there, he moves between sculpting and painting, building up layers of paint, ink, lacquer, oil stick, and natural pigments. The finished works have a dry, earthy surface that changes with the light and viewing angle, while bold shapes and shifts in texture create tension within each composition.

His practice is rooted in an appreciation for analog objects and the sense of permanence they carry, informing his ongoing exploration of color, material, and the lasting quality of physical things. Alongside his studio work, McConnell serves as Creative Director for Barcelona Restaurant Group, where he has helped shape the visual environments of Barcelona W**e Bar and Corsica restaurants across the United States.

✨ See his work in person at The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern, on view October 15–November 3, 2026, at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY. Opening reception: October 15, 6–8 PM.

10/12/2026

Clashing colors used to be treated as a mistake. For a growing number of contemporary artists, they’re the point.

Classical color theory is built around harmony: complementary pairs, analogous palettes, and warm tones balanced against cool. Our latest article looks at artists who know those rules well enough to override them, following a tradition that reaches back to the Fauvists, whose palettes critics once called unnatural. Two artists featured at Agora show how differently this approach can play out. Honglu Han’s “Chaoticism Painting” allows color to flow onto the canvas without a predetermined plan, while sculptor Robert Jordan, a former scientist and engineer, applies contrasting colors with precision to heighten the tension in his non-objective forms.

In “Color Theory, Reimagined: How Contemporary Artists Are Breaking the Rules,” we explore what dissonant color communicates emotionally and why breaking a rule well depends on understanding it first.

🔗 Click below to read the full article!
https://agora-gallery.com/color-theory-contemporary-artists/

Contemporary artists are breaking color theory’s rules with clashing hues and deliberate dissonance, using color to create tension and movement.

10/12/2026

In a living space you return to every day, a painting by Alli Gerrish Studio reads as a story as much as a composition. Working between abstraction and symbolic representation, Gerrish explores human emotion, energy, vulnerability, and transformation through visual storytelling, drawing on personal experience and the energy of everyday circumstances to create compositions that reflect broader societal and cultural narratives. Geometric and organic forms, including stripes, circles, and ellipses, connect and overlap throughout her paintings, alongside the hourglass, a recurring motif that represents both the artist and the universal human condition. Her distinctive palette evokes the spirit of Mid-Century Modern design while remaining rooted in a contemporary artistic vision. Central to her practice is metamorphosis, which she sees as both personal and collective: vulnerability and adversity transformed into possibility, resilience, and renewal.

Alli Gerrish Studio Rises, 2025, Acrylic on wood panel, 48" x 48"

👀 See this work in person at Agora Gallery's The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern exhibition, on view October 15–November 3, 2026. Join us for the Opening Reception on October 15, from 6–8 PM, at 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY!

✉️ For inquiries, reach out to [email protected].

10/11/2026

Meet this week in : New York-based artist Alexander List, who works with metal, wood, and light to create detailed works inspired by nature.

List started out making botanical illustrations in watercolor and gouache. Over the years, he moved through different materials and techniques until he found his way to embossed metal. Today, he shapes gold- or silver-plated aluminum by hand and mounts it onto wood.

Each work begins as a small drawing. List then traces and embosses the design into the metal, building raised and recessed areas that catch the light across the surface. Shift your position, and the work changes with you, revealing new highlights, shadows, and details.

Time spent on São Miguel in the Azores, with its lush forests, dramatic landscapes, and sense of calm, brought him back to the botanical subjects that first drew him in. Portugal's traditional azulejo tiles left their mark too: just as those tiles come together to form larger images, some of List's works join several embossed sheets into a single mosaic-like composition, while others are made from one sheet.

The result is work that asks you to slow down and look closely.

✨ Visit Agora Gallery to see Alexander List's work in person at The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern, on view October 15–November 3, 2026, at 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY. Join us at the opening reception on October 15, 6–8 PM, to meet the artist and hear more about his process.

For inquiries: [email protected]

10/11/2026

Warm wood and earthy textures complement Drew Austin McConnell's sculptural paintings, where iron oxide and ochre bring a raw, grounded presence to a lived-in space. McConnell works mainly in concrete, applying it to wood panels while still wet and shaping the surface before adding layers of paint, ink, lacquer, oil stick, and natural pigments. Moving between sculpting and painting, he arrives at a dry, earthy surface that changes with light and perspective, while bold shapes and shifts in texture create tension within the composition. His practice grows from an appreciation for analog objects and the sense of permanence they carry.

Featured Work: Iron Oxide & Ochre No. 1 (He Walked Barefoot In The Barn), 2026, Sculpted Concrete, Acrylic, Iron Oxide, and Oil on Wood, Welded & Rusted Steel Frame, 44" × 31"

👀 See this work in person at Agora Gallery's The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern exhibition, on view October 15 - November 3, 2026. Join us for the Opening Reception on October 15, from 6–8 PM, at 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY!

✉️ For inquiries, reach out to [email protected].

10/10/2026

Following a very successful opening of his Combustion series in Los Angeles, Spencer Frazer () is presenting his Nature and Combustion series together for the first time in a three-month solo exhibition at Bothell City Hall Gallery in Bothell, WA. The exhibition opened with the Artwalk on October 8 and extends throughout the gallery and into the City Council Chambers, giving visitors the chance to experience the work in a different setting.

Spencer’s paintings explore humanity’s relationship to nature, energy and industry, and the environmental changes that shape our lives. Shown together, the two bodies of work become one larger conversation.

Congratulations, Spencer, on this solo exhibition and on carrying your work from Los Angeles to Washington.👏

10/09/2026

Between observation and memory, the familiar takes on a new perspective.

New Jersey-based painter Yu Cheng draws inspiration from everyday encounters, remembered places, and images glimpsed in passing. Working primarily in oil, Cheng creates quiet, layered compositions where familiar spaces shift in mood and images within images invite a closer look. Rather than leading viewers toward a single narrative, the paintings leave room for personal interpretation, allowing meaning to unfold through the details.

✨ Discover Yu Cheng’s work in The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern, Agora Gallery’s upcoming collective exhibition, bringing art and design together under the skylight.

📅 October 15–November 3, 2026
🥂 Opening Reception: October 15, 6–8 PM
📍 Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001

✉️ For artwork inquiries, contact [email protected].

10/08/2026

Meet Joshua YeheNara, an American fine art photographer working with the wet plate collodion process and ultra-large-format film photography. His practice is fully analog, combining craftsmanship, experimentation, and traditional photographic techniques.

Beyond making photographs, YeheNara collects, restores, redesigns, and builds antique wooden cameras, including custom ultra-large-format 3D Deardorff studio cameras. Working without digital tools, he relies on custom-made equipment, careful lighting, and in-camera techniques, making the physical process an integral part of his photography.

His debut series, Organic Photography For The Digital Age, received international recognition, including first place in the Professional – Analog/Film – Fine Art category at the 2026 International Photography Awards.

✨ See his photograph in person at The Showroom: Mid-Century Modern, on view October 15–November 3, 2026, at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY. Opening reception: October 15, 6–8 PM.

For inquiries: [email protected]

10/08/2026

What if a quilt could tell a story, preserve a memory, and carry a voice? ✨

A day to remember Faith Ringgold (1930–2024), the Harlem-born artist, author, educator, and activist whose groundbreaking work brought together painting, textiles, storytelling, and history.

Ringgold is best known for her story quilts, a distinctive body of work that combined painted imagery, quilted fabric, and written narratives. Drawing from her own experiences and from Black American history and culture, she transformed the quilt into a powerful form of contemporary art.

Her artistic journey was also deeply connected to activism. In the 1960s and ’70s, Ringgold created politically charged paintings addressing racism and sexism, while also protesting the exclusion of Black and women artists from major museum exhibitions. In 1971, she co-founded Where We At, a collective for African American women artists.

One of her best-known works, Tar Beach (1988), tells the story of Cassie Louise Lightfoot, an eight-year-old girl who imagines herself flying freely above Harlem and the George Washington Bridge. Ringgold later adapted the story into the award-winning children’s book Tar Beach, published in 1991.

✨ Swipe through to celebrate Faith Ringgold’s fearless storytelling, powerful imagination, and enduring influence on American art. Follow for more stories about the artists who shaped art history.

Featured works:
• Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach (1988), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
• Street Story Quilt (1985), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Freedom of Speech (1990), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York