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Celebrated for his repurposing of everyday objects, pop icons, and cultural artifacts, Jeff Koons has preserved vacuum cleaners for eternity, placed Michael Jackson and his pet monkey on a pedestal, documented himself and his pornstar girlfriend in a state of sexual bliss, and transformed cartoon characters and holiday tchotchkes into dynamic works of art. Returning to Gagosian after being represented by David Zwirner and Pace, his Frieze presentation—featuring three iconic sculptures based on the Marvel Comics superhero Hulk displayed in an immersive setting—was one of the solo booth highlights. Drawn from Koons’ own collection, two of the sculptures, Hulk (Tubas) and Hulk (Organ), incorporate a playable musical component, while all three ironically reference Andy Warhol’s paintings of Elvis Presley with their wide-legged stance. 

Image: Jeff Koons, Hulk (Tubas), 2004–18, polychromed bronze and brass, 97 1/4 × 82 3/4 × 48 1/8 inches (247 × 210 × 122.2 cm), edition of 3 + AP © Jeff Koons. Incredible Hulk™ and © Marvel. All rights reserved.

After initially studying painting, Sarah Sze launched her career as a sculptor, but over the years, she’s added photography, video, printmaking, and installation art to her experimental process. A winner of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and the United States representative at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Sze later returned to her painterly roots in expansive solo shows and public installations, including her highly acclaimed photographic sculpture at LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal B in New York. Through intricate arrangements of objects and a surge of visuals that are collaged, rephotographed, and collaged again, Sze deepens our engagement with the relentless flow of visual narratives we encounter every day. The painting Time is Slowed by the Earth reflects the continuous and cyclical nature of image-making in a context where consumption and production are increasingly intertwined, while also evoking the emotional response of action painting.

Image: Sarah Sze, Time is Slowed by the Earth, 2025. Oil paint, acrylic paint, acrylic polymers, archival paper, ink, dibond, aluminum, and wood 103 1/4 x 129 x 3 inches; 262.3 x 327.7 x 7.6 cm.

A self-taught Balinese artist with a background in literature and physics, Citra Sasmita initially worked as an illustrator for short stories. She then expanded her artistic practice by utilizing the Kamasan painting technique, a 15th-century tradition originally reserved for men and used to depict Hindu epics. Sasmita creatively reinterprets these mythical and classical narratives of war and romance, focusing on celebrating female resistance. For her first solo presentation in New York, the installation “Vortex in the Land of Liberation” showcased individual pieces of embroidered fabrics, encircling a painting suspended in the shape of an omega, to depict tales of divine female figures. Alongside this central vessel, two hands, including Cosmic Dance 2, adorned the forest green walls, with palms open to offer more miniature Kamasan paintings, portraying powerful women populating a post-patriarchal world.

Image: Citra Sasmita, Cosmic Dance 2, 2025. Acrylic on traditional Kamasan canvas, velvet, 89.37" x 59.84" (227 cm x 152 cm). © Citra Sasmita. 

One of Mexico's prominent contemporary artists, Gabriel Orozco has significantly influenced international art for over thirty years by continuously questioning the essence of art, its creation process, and its subject matter. His varied practice encompasses sculpture, photography, painting, and video, delving into philosophical dilemmas through unexpected encounters and spatial dynamics. With a sensational survey currently at Mexico City’s Museo Jumex, the gallery presented his painting Halo front and center at the fair. The expansive, layered painting depicts the unlikely meeting of two 15th-century figures: Leonardo Da Vinci’s ink sketch, Vitruvian Man, and the grand stone sculpture of Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess of life and death. Known for her skirt of twisting snakes, prominent breasts, and a necklace made of human hearts, Coatlicue symbolizes duality, the conflict of opposites, and cosmic forces associated with fertility, creation, and destruction. Orozco’s pairing showcases these contrasting global viewpoints from an intriguing philosophical angle.

Image: Gabriel Orozco, Halo, 2023 – 2024. Tempera on linen canvas, 200 x 200 x 4 cm (78.74 x 78.74 x 1.57 in.). © Gabriel Orozco.

With minimal gestures and expert execution, Hannah Levy manipulates texturally incongruous materials such as silicone, glass, stone, and polished metal to create tactile sculptures that provoke sensory experiences. The New York-born and based artist appropriates everyday objects and defamiliarizes them by employing unexpected materials and distorting their formal properties. Her sparse solo booth at the fair showcased five new freestanding and wall-mounted sculptures, smartly crafted from stainless steel and glass. In her untitled wall works, she responds to key elements of both Art Nouveau and modernist design. Pieces like the one illustrated here reference the Art Nouveau tradition of transforming natural forms into metal, with its menacing, animalistic claws adding a seductive yet sinuous touch.

Image: Hannah Levy, Untitled, 2025. Stainless steel, glass, 29.02" x 60" x 23.5" (73.7 cm x 152.4 cm x 59.7 cm).

One of the greatest chroniclers of twentieth-century America, Alice Neel was born in a small town near Philadelphia in 1900, but made her mark as a “painter of people,” as she humbly called herself, in New York, where she lived and worked until her death in 1984. The subject of a major retrospective exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021, the artist continues to be celebrated worldwide for her realistic portraits of ordinary people—highlighting Neel’s long-term commitment to representing the human condition and her practice of realistically portraying individuals from various walks of life. At the fair, the gallery exhibited Neel’s marvelous portrait of John Cheim, a director at Robert Miller Gallery (1977-1997) and co-owner of Cheim & Read (1997-2023). The picture was painted in 1979, three years before Neel had her first of eight solo shows with the gallery, which gives the impression that Cheim was responsible for bringing the now-coveted artist into its stable.

Image: Alice Neel, John Cheim, 1979. Oil on canvas. 115.6 x 76.2 cm, 45 1/2 x 30 in © The Estate of Alice Neel. 

With over 40 years of artistic experience, Marcelo Silveira is a prominent figure in contemporary Brazilian art. His works challenge conventional definitions of art, encompassing sculpture, folk art, craft, and collecting. One of the primary materials used by Silveira in his works is Cajacatinga wood, a tree native to the Atlantic Forest that was widely utilized in sugar mills, which have gradually disappeared. Since encountering the material at a sugarcane plantation, the artist has used it in the creation of several series of sculptural works. His surreal Dupla XI sculpture features abstract, curvilinear elements made from the exotic Cajacatinga wood, interconnected and suspended by a bovine leather cord. Dangling in space like a floating flower or a fleeting bird, it invites the viewer into a nature that is far, far away.

Image: Marcelo Silveira, Dupla XI, 2022. Cajacatinga wood and leather. Unique. 62.99" x 61.02" x 56.3" (160 cm x 155 cm x 143 cm).

A self-taught Filipino artist Pacita Abad studied law before relinquishing a scholarship at Stanford University to pursue a career as a painter. Celebrated for her distinctive quilted trapunto paintings, vibrant masks, intricately crafted underwater scenes, and abstract compositions, the Philippines-born artist learned about materials and techniques through extensive travels, exploring them throughout her life. The subject of the largest museum exhibit in the U.S. devoted to an Asian American female artist, which opened at the Walker Art Center in 2023, she was featured at the fair with multiple works, including Bacongo I (Acrylic Study). Painted in 1983, this early piece in her “Bacongo” series is informed by masks created by the Kongo people of Central Africa, which she visited in 1979. Abad, who passed away at 58 in 2004, drew inspiration from diverse global cultures through her experiences as an immigrant and her interactions with other migrants, marginalized communities, and refugees.

Image: Pacita Abad, Bacongo I (Acrylic Study), 1983. Acrylic on stitched, silk-screened, and padded canvas. Framed Dimensions: 55 1/4 x 40 1/4 x 1 3/4 in (141 x 102.9 cm). Photo by Charles Roussel.

A multidisciplinary Brazilian artist exhibiting internationally since 2008, Maria Nepomuceno creates vibrant sculptures, installations, paintings, and drawings. Best known for her knitted sculptural works, rooted in traditional weaving techniques from her cultural upbringing, she draws inspiration from indigenous traditions, Afro-Brazilian spirituality, and Brazilian landscapes. Using fabric, beads, rope, straw, clay, ceramics, wood, plants, and other materials, her work intersects with artistic and social movements such as feminist art, Neo-Concrete, and environmental activism. The Rio de Janeiro-based artist’s wall work Sem título [Untitled]—one of two pieces on view at the gallery’s booth exhibition, which addresses land as soil, territory, memory, and future while reflecting on social, political, and environmental concerns—combines beads, ceramics, wood, gourds, and rope into a delightfully dynamic mix.

Image: Maria Nepomuceno, Sem título [Untitled], 2025. Beads, ceramics, wood, gourds and rope. 37.4" x 55.12" x 12.6" (95 cm x 140 cm x 32 cm).

Rodrigo Hernández, a Mexico City-born artist educated in his hometown and Europe, creates paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations that explore perceptions of art, often inspired by literary and aesthetic texts. His unique characters and symbols evoke the unknown while offering a sense of familiarity. The seven realistic paintings in his solo booth show featured bats, inspired by Aesop's fable, "The Bat, the Birds, and the Beasts," where a bat claims to be a bird among beasts and a beast among birds but is rejected by both when peace returns, illustrating that "He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends.” Hernández’s work emphasizes the ecological role of bats, depicting their natural behaviors and promoting a vision of interconnectedness and shared community, especially in a time of crisis.

Image: Rodrigo Hernández, Se vider, se disperser #1 (To see, to disperse #1), 2025. Oil on Wood, 13.78" x 11.81" (35 cm x 30 cm).