The cruel realities of our world are softened by the steadfast presents of nature, and August in Upstate New York brings its annual plentitude with artwork to match. As sunflowers rule the land this month, solo reveals and group exhibitions across the area convey heat and glee. Daniel Giordano presents a red-hued site-specific set up on the experimental Inexperienced Lodge in Chatham. Dynamic gallery reveals in Kingston embrace work and sculptures by Jeanette Fintz and Monika Zarzeczna, respectively, each displaying at 68 Prince Avenue Gallery; and Brandon Thomas Brown tells the story of ancestry by collaged images at Pinkwater Gallery. Beautiful mixed-media works by Ken Ragsdale at Entrance Room Gallery in Hudson will appeal you, and Lynne Tobin’s line research at Cross Modern Artwork Initiatives in Stone Ridge are cool and conceptual. Try stoic work of the USA by Little Walt Canine at Ruffed Grouse Gallery in Narrowsburg and expertise the colourful power of a bunch present at Gallery 495 in Catskill. With mighty August as our guiding gentle, allow us to get pleasure from these fleeting days of summer season and an abundance of artwork this month!
Daniel Giordano: I Knew Your Father When He Had Cojones
The Inexperienced Lodge, 80 Heart Avenue, Chatham, New YorkThrough August 17
Daniel Giordano, “Study For Chronos XIV (Jupiter Optimus Maximus)” (2025), acrylic polymer emulsion, bubbles, cellophane, char, particles, cloth, followers, {hardware}, industrial bubble machine, insulated jumpsuit, pure gentle, opossum, packing foam, pigment, and extra (photograph by Owen Barensfeld, courtesy the Inexperienced Lodge)
Born and raised in Newburgh, New York, multi-media artist Daniel Giordano experiments with a broad vary of atypical media to create eccentric sculptures and assemblages that defy categorization, with captions that learn like epic poems. With latest solo reveals at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts and the Hyde Assortment in Glens Falls, New York, Giordano is on a gentle course towards ever-greater stardom. His site-specific set up, “I Knew Your Father When He Had Cojones” (2025), is as wild because it will get: He has burned the partitions from the ceiling down, including drawings on the home windows and puffy materials on the ground, inviting viewers into his immersive fiery lair. Launched throughout Upstate Artwork Weekend with a particular experimental stay sound efficiency by the 181 Collective (an artist group primarily based in Oregon and North Carolina), this present is a radiant imaginative and prescient of Giordano’s riotous artwork apply.
Jeanette Fintz and Monika Zarzeczna: Elusive Thresholds
68 Prince Avenue Gallery, 68 Prince Avenue, Kingston, New YorkThrough August 17
Jeanette Fintz, “Transit Adagio” (2022), acrylic on canvas (photograph courtesy 68 Prince Avenue Gallery)
68 Prince Avenue Gallery presents two sensational summary solo exhibitions directly in Elusive Thresholds. Work by Jeanette Fintz consists of large-scale work that seem to groove and grapple with a quasi-architectural geometric language of countless prospects, together with vibrant works reminiscent of “Transit Adagio” (2022) and “Elusive Threshold” (2024). Monika Zarzeczna presents small wooden sculptures organized collectively on the wall and painted with brilliant acrylic colours that give them a capricious edge, and works reminiscent of “Chance is it?” (2025) and “Or Determined” (2025) are each layered and spacious, giving the impression of an open-ended narrative that we will prepare and re-arrange in our minds.
Invoke & Imbibe
WomensWork.Artwork, 12 Vassar Avenue, Poughkeepsie, New YorkThrough August 24
Maria Krasnopolsky, “Veiled Emilia” (2024), oil on canvas (photograph courtesy WomensWork.Artwork)
A female-run gallery and platform for underrepresented creatives, WomensWork.Artwork in Poughkeepsie presents the juried exhibition Invoke & Imbibe, that includes works by 26 feminine and non-binary artists lively within the Hudson Valley and past as chosen by visitor curator Jaime Ransome. With a want to have a good time “unapologetic female energy,” as acknowledged within the press launch, Maria Krasnopolsky’s “Veiled Emilia” (2024) depicts a unadorned lady lined in a ghostlike veil as her hand gestures towards us. “One Without Shame” (2023) by Lauren Hollick options one more bare lady, this time within the fetal place, mendacity flat on a comfortable mattress of pure moss and little white mushrooms. Evelyn Gardiner’s “To Consume A Butterfly” (2024) is a sultry oil portray that features Latin textual content; in it, two girls try to eat superb butterflies in a pure setting as they attempt to escape.
etheReality from breath to air, and again
Ann Avenue Gallery, 104 Ann Avenue, Newburgh, New YorkThrough August 31
Linda Stillman, “Daily Skies” (2011), acrylic on paper panels (photograph courtesy Ann Avenue Gallery)
A watery blue tone surfaces all through numerous mixed-media works within the group present etheReality from breath to air, and again, which embodies the celestial. Curated by gallery director Alison McNulty, works reminiscent of “Enter Through Smoke” (2023) by Mollie McKinley radiate a mystical power; fabricated from carved and charred salt and blown glass, it’s each natural and otherworldly. Linda Stillman’s “Daily Skies” (2011), a collection of paper panels, seems to hum harmoniously with numerous shades of cobalt in a geometrical sample, whereas Amy Talluto’s clay sculpture “Multi-head (Spill Vase)” (2022) is a kind that concurrently resembles a fleshy human and one thing by no means earlier than seen.
Ken Ragsdale: Symphony
Entrance Room Gallery, 205 Warren Avenue, Hudson, New YorkThrough August 31
Ken Ragsdale, “Symphony #1 2nd Movement Evening ‘The Tractor Tire’” (2025), ink, watercolor, gouache, and archival inkjet print, {photograph} of handmade paper buildings on laser etched paper (photograph courtesy Entrance Room Gallery)
Among the many most spectacular exhibitions in Upstate New York this month is an exhibition by Ken Ragsdale, the place the Twilight Zone meets theatrical film set mock-ups in a mesmerizing suite of 12 elegant work. Every title begins with “Symphony #1” (all works 2025), and a mysterious story unfolds from there: In “Symphony #1 2nd Movement Evening ‘The Tractor Tire,’” we stumble upon a defunct tractor backlit towards a cerulean night time with skinny white drawings of spinning gears occupying the sky. The opposite works observe an identical sample: enigmatic worlds beneath with mathematical constellation-like drawings above. In “Symphony #1 1st Movement Afternoon ‘The Slide,’” a kids’s playground stuffed with empty slides seems to be on the threshold of one other galaxy, whereas “Symphony #1 2nd Movement Morning ‘The Tent Trailer’” takes us right into a trailer park atmosphere however leaves us guessing as to the place we’re and what obtained us there.
Ancestry: The Images of Brandon Thomas Brown
Pinkwater Gallery, 237 Truthful Avenue, Kingston, New YorkThrough September 2
Brandon Thomas Brown, “Operation” (2024), pictures collage (photograph courtesy Pinkwater Gallery)
Exploring the wealthy intersection between magnificence and Black identification, photographer Brandon Thomas Brown is a grasp at capturing human complexity with candor and care. Ancestry brings collectively latest works that make use of collage methods and portraiture to precise depth of character whereas hinting at private wounds. “Operation” (2024) contains a youthful lady’s face lower aside and dissected to disclose an older lady at work underneath her pores and skin towards a deep pink background, whereas “No Time for Black Tears” (2025) is a portrait of a pensive man who leans ahead, the hazy blue-hued lighting revealing the scars on his face. Set towards an identical indigo backdrop, “Untitled [Dakaibo]” (2025) contains a bare-chested man turning away, his stoic pose suggesting an intimate second of non-public reckoning.
Adam Linn: Fascinator
Turley Gallery, 609 Warren Avenue, Flooring 2, Hudson, New YorkThrough September 7
Adam Linn, “Fixations” (2025), coloured pencil, acrylic gouache, watercolor, and UV varnish on paper mounted panel (courtesy Turley Gallery)
Turley Gallery sometimes presents a minimum of two exhibitions directly, and this time round Adam Linn: Fascinator is certainly one of three terrific reveals (a go to there this month additionally provides you the possibility to see magical glittery collaged works by Vickie Pierre and a theatrical site-specific set up by Sara Stern). Combining a graphic edge with a masterful command of coloured pencil, gouache, and watercolor, Linn’s work really feel like Pop-inspired industrial animation. “Fixations” (2025) is a vigorous yellow scene piqued by two opposing screwheads; in the meantime, one feels seduced by the splendid glowing pink machine of “Metalmouth” (2025), whereas the gears of “Rainbow Elixir” (2025) seem to soften into pure electrical magnificence.
Lynne Tobin | Line Research Drawings
Cross Modern Artwork Initiatives, North River Electrical Home, Stone Ridge, New YorkThrough September 13
Lynne Tobin, “Line Drama” (2023), ink on paper (courtesy the artist)
Lynne Tobin is aware of that the straightforward line is the last word muse. Her solo present is a celebration of the indomitable black line: going right here, going there, going in all places as guided by Tobin’s cautious instructions and discoveries. In “Threads #7” (2023), layers of them (one on high of the opposite) give the impression of woven cloth, whereas “Line Drama” (2018) is an extended vertical drawing of 5 frantic black strains that begin on the wall and run all the way down to the ground in a fantastic and messy calligraphic jumble. In “Untitled” (2017), a meditative wave coming in from the appropriate fades out into damaged streaks of black stardust to the left.
Little Walt Canine: Crossing America
Ruffed Grouse Gallery, 144 Important Avenue, Narrowsburg, New YorkThrough September 21
Little Walt Canine aka L.W.D., “Crossing America #12” (2025), oil on canvas, (courtesy the Ruffed Grouse Gallery)
Taking inspiration from the various tradition of his native Los Angeles and influential social moments such because the Watts Rebel of 1965, a collection of uprisings in response to violent confrontations between White legislation enforcement and Black civilians, Little Walt Canine (L.W.D.) paints with a courageous spirit. His solo exhibition Crossing America options stark oil work (all works 2025) that provide barren and blunt visions of an empty United States occupied by lone automobiles. In “Crossing America #12,” a yellow automobile approaches a black bridge towards a naked background, whereas in “Crossing America #8,” two automobiles drift alongside a white highway. In “Crossing America #15,” that very same yellowish automotive from the overpass disappears right into a bluish haze with out a horizon because the headlights lead each the automotive and the highway right into a abandoned mist.
In This Right here Place, We Flesh
Gallery 495, 495 Important Avenue, Catskill, New YorkThrough October 4
Nkechi Ebubedike, “Woman on Stakes II” (2025) (photograph by Otto Ohle, courtesy the artist and Gallery 495)
Figuration performs a central function within the group exhibition In This Right here Place, We Flesh. Curated by Maty Sall, three artists discover modes of humanity and the physical-meets-metaphysical in dynamically expressive works. “Between Thoughts” (2022) by Shiri Mordechay is an outsized watercolor work wherein dolls, creatures, monsters, and swinging lightbulbs meet in a maelstrom of morphing kinds. Aineki Traverso’s “Sub Specie Aeterni” (2025) is a row of works on paper with mystical summary shapes and human eyes that extends down the wall, whereas Nkechi Ebubedike’s “Fragmented Figure II” (2025) combines dismembered elements of a determine, together with legs and half a face, inside an summary architectural environs harking back to de Chirico, leading to a lyrical imaginative and prescient of flesh inside and with out a place.
