5 Standout Reveals to See at Small Galleries in July 2025

On this month-to-month roundup, we highlight 5 stellar exhibitions at small and rising galleries.

Verduyn, Moregem, Belgium

By way of Sep. 20

Bao Vuong fled Vietnam by sea when he was just one 12 months previous, crammed into a ship along with his mother and father and 200 others looking for refuge from the Vietnam Warfare. Not one of the people he traveled with, nor the boats that carried them, seem in his oil work on wooden and canvas. As an alternative, the ocean and sky—the perilous, detached backdrop of his household’s journey—are rendered in thick, meditative layers of black paint. A number of these work, from his “Crossing” collection, is the topic of a solo exhibition at Verduyn, titled “Retenir.”

In these works, Vuong makes use of the titanic nature of the ocean and its sweeping vistas to speak the sensation of exile at such a younger age. Laguna Nera I (2023), a grayscale portray of rippling open water, portrays the expanse in nightmarish element, with a darkening sky. Nonetheless, a few of these work evoke tranquility, reminiscent of The Crossing 158 (2023), the place the artist makes use of gold leaf to painting the dawn over the horizon.

In January, the Brussels-based artist mounted one other solo exhibition at BAILLY GALLERY in Geneva, titled “Wave.”

ARDEN + WHITE GALLERY, New Canaan, Connecticut

By way of July 13

Throughout a go to to Indonesia, Australian artist Heath Wae witnessed firsthand how flowers have been used as residing choices. There, he noticed how flora performed a participatory function in ceremony and functioned, in some instances, as a bridge between people and nature. That understanding of the flower—as sacred and non secular—varieties the premise of Wae’s debut U.S. solo present. In “Faculty of the Flower,” on view at ARDEN + WHITE GALLERY, his layered compositions depict hazy, color-soaked petals.

In Bloom 4 (2025), Wae depicts what seems to be a blooming orchid, with blurred purple petals towards an orange background. In most of the works, a ghostly floral kind is adorned with a halo of sunshine within the middle of the canvas. Golden Deity (2025), specifically, incorporates a distinguished orange ring circling the pistil of the flower, underscoring Wae’s non secular engagement with nature.

Primarily based in Mullumbimby, Australia, Wae graduated with a bachelor’s diploma in artwork from the Sydney Faculty of the Arts. His earlier solo exhibition, “Devotions,” was staged by The Dot Venture in London final 12 months.

TAMARA KREISLER Gallery, Madrid

By way of July 19

British photographer Nick Brandt shot his collection “The Day Could Break” in Zimbabwe and Kenya in late 2020 to discover how local weather change impacts the surroundings and people alike. He builds on these themes in a bunch exhibition he curated at TAMARA KREISLER Gallery, which showcases 4 different photographers. “4 Chapters” options the work of Lebanese artist Rania Matar, Australian photographer Morganna Magee, and Lima-based artist Alessandro Cinque. A specific spotlight is the work of Saidou Dicko, a self-taught artist from Burkina Faso who has exhibited throughout artwork gala’s within the U.S. in addition to on the Dakar Biennale in Senegal. Every of those artists brings their distinctive photographic eye to communities and locations impacted by our altering planet.

Cinque’s black-and-white pictures intimately doc the lives of Indigenous communities throughout Latin America. In the meantime, Magee’s monochrome photographs take a more in-depth have a look at life and demise in nature, by means of photographs of albino peacocks or dying bushes beneath the evening sky. Matar’s portraits give attention to girls in city and pure areas, usually evoking a way of power inside lonesome settings. And Dicko’s painted pictures characteristic silhouetted figures set towards vivid, patterned backdrops. These faceless human varieties are impressed by his expertise tracing the shadows of animals whereas working as a shepherd. “A shadow makes its objective-self disappear,” he mentioned in an interview. “An individual’s shadow suggests a human being and nothing else. That is what drew me to shadows.”

Sorondo, Barcelona

By way of July 24

As a toddler, Mexican artist Luis Renteria watched his grandmother write a want on a bit of paper, wrap it round a candle, and tie it with a string. To him, this straightforward act remodeled these home items into “objects that stop to occupy the area for which they have been made and start to inhabit a symbolic area,” he mentioned. This concept—of on a regular basis supplies become non secular vessels—impressed “Un puñal en un pañuelo” his solo present at Sorondo. The exhibition incorporates a collection of textiles stitched from cotton, horsehair, feathers, and steel, all grounded in familial ritual and non secular intent.

One standout work is Casa (2025), a dangling sculpture made out of cochineal-dyed cotton, rabbit hair, feathers, pearls, and wooden. Handwoven panels dangle just like the partitions of a home, held collectively by a curved textile band that loops by means of the shape. The fragile construction evokes a house with out a base, capturing the present’s central paradox: how magnificence and softness can nonetheless carry the hint of hazard. The exhibition’s title, which interprets to a “dagger in a handkerchief,” takes on additional resonance in a collection of three works all titled “Armadura.” Right here, bands of colour and thread are formed into rectangular varieties and framed in wood packing containers, forming quiet, protecting enclosures that nod to the work’s title, which interprets to “armor.”

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1991, Renteria earned his MA in manufacturing and creative analysis on the College of Barcelona.

Night time Café, London

By way of July 25