THE ARMORY SHOW 2026

This presentation brings together work by four gallery artists for whom painting flowers occupies a distinct part of their practice, whether as a direct engagement with nature, or with the art-historical lineage of still life. In these works, alongside the symbolic meanings of specific flowers (daffodils, poppies, roses) we become especially attuned to aspects of composition (the rise of a stem, the fall of a petal) while the painter’s colour palette and language of marks (smudge, drip, exuberant flourish) bestows a unique emotional tenor. This presentation is characterised by its focus, yet ultimately it speaks to the openness and freedom afforded by the subject, echoing Édouard Manet’s dictum that a ‘painter can say all he wants to with fruit or flowers...’

This marks the gallery’s first presentation of paintings by Clare Woods since announcing representation of the artist and features a number of floral still lifes for which Woods is widely celebrated. The artist began painting flowers in earnest in 2020 during the first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic when, as Charlotte Mullins writes in the recent monograph Clare Woods: As I Please, ‘a combination of global and personal health issues sharpened her focus, and her paintings began to spring from photographs that she had taken of flower bouquets and everyday objects.’ Since then, with an unerring eye for the mutable and mysterious, Woods has returned to the apparently simple motif of a bunch of flowers, exploring physical form through fluid mark-making, alerting us to shifts of mood and meaning and, ultimately, to the movement of time – from bud to bloom to falling petal; indeed, Woods has said that ‘For me, the idea of a vase of flowers represents a life span, in a tiny little environment... It’s the whole life cycle that I am interested in.’

Current and forthcoming solo institutional exhibitions include Clare Woods: Garden Without Seasons, an exhibition of recent paintings and works on paper, at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, London, UK (until 8 November 2026); Threads of Ascent: Tapestries by Clare Woods, an exhibition of tapestries made in collaboration with Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, on view at Garden Museum, London, UK (9 October–5 November 2026); and Clare Woods: The Unmutable, which will take place at The Holburne Museum, Bath, UK, from 23 January 2027. The artist’s first solo exhibition with Victoria Miro will take place in London in February 2027.

Tal R often employs apparently simple compositional devices and motifs from everyday life to create complex, atmospheric worlds that, beginning with the recognisable and known, expand or collapse into spaces of enchantment or ambiguity, heady with atmosphere and colour. Each work in his series Untitled Flowers depicts a bunch of flowers picked by the artist from around his home in the Danish countryside, presented in a vase on a tabletop within a closely cropped interior space. In this deceptively quotidian world there is a deliberate, non-hierarchical sense of things existing on the same plane. Nonetheless, we notice how certain stems ascend buoyantly while others droop under heavy heads, how blooms become like characters within and between the works.

Current and recent institutional exhibitions include Tal R: Moonwalk, an exhibition of the artist’s sculptural work from the past twenty years, at Gl. Holtegaard, Copenhagen, Denmark (until 20 September 2026).

In paintings and watercolours Celia Paul returns to the motif of flowers, capturing an essence of quiet fortitude shared with her portraits and self-portraits. Her titles, at times, are like diary entries, reflecting the emotions of a specific day – Pink Rose, The Last Day of January, Tulips in March, Lilacs in April, Cherry Blossom in May, Late Summer Flowers, Vase of Flowers on the Last Day of December. Markers of time, these beguiling works look forwards as much as back. As Paul has said, ‘My flower paintings are almost always about renewal.’

This November, a major new book by the artist, entitled Objects of Desire: An Artist in Venice, is published in the UK by Jonathan Cape and in the US by New York Review Books. A new exhibition by the artist, also entitled Objects of Desire, opens at Victoria Miro Venice on 7 November.

For Doron Langberg, certain familiar patches of land are an enduring source of inspiration. Depicted close up, capturing parts of shrubs or flowers emerging out of a tangle of weeds, these fleeting fragments are painted spontaneously, in bursts of activity. In these new works, completed this summer on Fire Island, we become aware of Langberg’s deeply-felt engagement with paint, sliding between image and materiality, named and unnameable. Returning to the same subject matter over and over, the paintings become less about what they depict than about our shifting connection to the world and how we change over time.

The first monograph on the artist is published by Monacelli this autumn. Featuring new writing by Ian Alteveer, hannah baer and Gaby Collins-Fernandez, and an illuminating conversation with Langberg’s close friends, the artists Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Salman Toor, this expansive publication includes more than 100 paintings made by Langberg over the past ten years.

Additionally, the gallery will have works available to view by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Milton Avery, Hernan Bas, María Berrío and Yayoi Kusama.