Creativo’s Top Picks from Armory Show 2025

Weinstein Hammons Gallery (Booth 205)

Tia Keobounpheng's textile innovations drew consistent crowds. Her fabric art represents a new generation of artists pushing material boundaries in contemporary practice.

Keobounpheng started her practice eight years ago, coming from architecture and jewelry design. Attending her child's geometry classes inspired her to explore the medium further. She began weaving with thread on paper before shifting to thread on wood for its sturdier foundation. The vibrant thread colors create a truly standout exhibition.

Southern Guild (Booth 117)

Romeo Mivekannin and Mmangaliso Nzuza presented standout pieces that brought important global perspectives to the fair. Their works demonstrated sophisticated material approaches from underrepresented regions.

Mivekannin's practice is particularly compelling. In his portraits, he assumes the positions of Black sitters in reproductions of paintings by Manet and Géricault. His paintings reach across time and geography, revealing past traumas while suggesting transformation. The piece displayed at Armory this year is acrylic on velvet. With strong VIP day sales, expect new pieces for the weekend public days.

Gallery Sofie Van de Velde (Booth 125)

This Antwerp gallery featured an excellent solo booth showcasing Shirley Villavicencio Pizango. The focused presentation allowed for deep engagement with her artistic vision.
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Villavicencio Pizango's figurative portraits appear as informal snapshots, but these intimate paintings teem with raucous pattern and loose, expressive brushwork. Although best known for empathetic paintings of friends, family, and strangers, she also creates self-portraits and still lifes in the same gestural style..
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Her works reflect experiences of navigating different cultures, having grown up in Peru before moving to Ghent at age 18. Lush vegetation nodding to her memories of the Peruvian rainforest appears throughout her work, alongside geometric forms that suggest Inca pottery ornamentation.

Tim Van Laere Gallery (Booth 110)

Rinus Van de Velde's solo booth revealed the depth of his 20-year practice. Known for large-scale, fictional self-portraits and life-size decors that challenge boundaries between real and imagined, Van de Velde often casts himself in heroic roles.

His works incorporate elements from various media, embedding personal narratives into existing images. Working primarily with oil and colored pencil on paper, having shifted away from his earlier charcoal work, he creates naturalistic scenes with dramatic contrasts. His exploration of film as a medium further delves into themes of fiction versus reality. The artist is currently working on his fourth film in Belgium.

Gallery Aki (Booth 235)

Yang-Tsung Fan's pieces exploring nightclub culture from Taiwan brought fresh energy to the fair. His work translated contemporary social experiences into compelling visual language.

At 42, Fan paints mainly from his observer perspective. His nightclub piece is a flashback to his youth, capturing moments when he stood on the sidelines watching others dance and the DJ spin. Two pieces from his swimming series have already sold, with strong sales expected through the weekend.

These selections reveal something deeper happening in contemporary art. The material revolution I first noticed at Frieze LA with April Bey's Afrofuturistic pieces on Veilmetter Gallery's fuzzy green wall has evolved into a full market shift.

Art fairs are saturated spaces where galleries fight for attention. Using innovative materials and curating artists who push boundaries creates standout moments that attract press and collectors.

But collectors are responding differently to these material-heavy works. They're calculating how pieces fit into domestic spaces versus institutional settings. Some works translate to living rooms. Others demand museum scale.

The economics support this shift. VIP day sales were strong across traditional oil paintings, but material-heavy sculptures performed well throughout 2025. Jeff Koons's "Hulk Elvis" sold for $3 million at Frieze New York, while Mendes Wood DM sold Kishio Suga's "Sliced Stones" to a museum.

This material focus amplifies diverse artistic perspectives and signals fundamental changes in how art functions culturally and commercially. Collectors are developing new evaluation frameworks, building appreciation for labor-intensive, intimate artistic processes.

Artists are claiming new territories where traditional boundaries between craft, fine art, and installation dissolve into something more powerful.