As it does every year, The Armory Show signals the start of a bustling art season in New York City as the art world returns from summer retreats in the Hamptons, Upstate or further south in France and the Mediterranean. Since the launch of Frieze Seoul—this year overlapping with the iconic New York City fair—many mega galleries have pushed their openings to the second or even third week of September. Still, the city’s galleries are as usual set to host a new wave of blockbuster exhibitions and shows of emerging talent, each vying for a prime slot in the art calendar and acting as a proving ground for the year ahead. With that in mind, Observer has assembled a lineup of this month’s must-see New York exhibitions to keep firmly in view.
Elizabeth Glaessner's "Running Water"
P·P·O·W, New York
September 5 - October 18, 2025
Glaessner's paintings emerge from a liquid, dreamlike space where the subconscious rises and dissolves in the in-between, blurring abstraction and figuration. Working in oil, acrylic and pure pigments dispersed with water and binders, her technique shifts between formal articulation and non-representational gesture, opening surreal and heightened possibilities of vision. Ghostly, diaphanous figures drift across these canvases, embodying continual metamorphosis and collapsing the boundaries between body, psyche and the external world. The new works at P·P·O·W draw on her dream analysis and personal history, refracted through universal archetypes and literary tropes, to consider the body as a porous vessel in constant dialogue with its surroundings. Through fluid, intuitive processes, Glaessner reveals the delicate interplay between inner and outer worlds, inviting viewers into a space where boundaries dissolve and new forms of connection take shape. Her work becomes a meditation on the body’s vulnerability and fluidity, its ability to transcend physical limits and its potential to reconnect through watery dimensions that gesture toward a mythical, interconnected reality.