This May is an especially busy month for the art world: first there was Frieze, then Venice, then the big-ticket auctions. Oh, and Basel is right around the corner. It can be hard to remember what you’ve already seen, let alone to keep track of the latest gallery openings. If you’re reaching your art saturation point, but still want to catch the best of what’s new, you’re in luck. We’ve put together our top 5 artists to watch this month. 

1.  Andy Denzler in “Introspection” at Opera Gallery

Andy Denzler, Woman With Glass Bowl (2019). Courtesy of Opera Gallery.

Solitary figures lost in contemplation fill the canvases on view in Swiss artist Andy Denzler’s latest exhibition. Denzler has been exploring ideas of decay and decomposition since he began his Figures and Landscapes series 10 years ago, and his current Interiors series is a development in this interest. The artist paints from his own photographs to create works that appear at once like faded photographs and like pictures glitching on a computer screen. “I’m inspired by the saturation in Polaroids and break down color tones to create defined palette that has become an essential part of my visual language,” said Denzler. He cites Edward Hopper as an artist he’s studied closely. The highlight of the exhibition is his most recent work, Woman With Glass Bowl, which shows a reclining woman with a  bowl propped on her head as a comment, perhaps, on current cultural myopia—and it’s certainly a look at the absurd things people do when they’re alone. “My paintings should look more real than mass media images,” said Denzler, “A hyper reality that becomes more important than reality itself – like Baudrillard argued.”

“Introspection” is on view through May 19, 2019, at Opera Gallery, 791 Madison Avenue, New York.

2. Joël Andrianomearisoa in “Tomorrow, tomorrow. Those are words. You like flowers. How about tomorrow?” at Sabrina Amrani Gallery

Joël Andrianomearisoa, Icons of the Present (2019). Courtesy of Sabrina Amrani Gallery

In this sensuous and elemental exhibition, Malagasy-Parisian artist Joël Andrianomearisoa explores time and its illusions. In Icons of the Present, the centerpiece of the exhibition, dyed textiles, ropes, plants, and wood are suspended, interacting like memories, related and discontinuous. The work is powerful in its often raw simplicity. In Tomorrow, Tomorrow, expanses of a transparent black textiles are sewn together in a room-wide collage, conjuring veils of mourning, of North African dress, of women dyeing cloth, of curtains closed against the brightness of the sun, of laundry drying on a line, of burial shrouds.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow. Those are words. You like flowers. How about tomorrow?” is on view through July 27, 2019, at Sabrina Amrani Gallery Sallaberry, 52, Madrid.

3. Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi in “I surrender to you, ashen lands and blue skies” at Hemphill 

Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, Before the beginning and after the end, (2018). Courtesy of Hemphill.

Tehran-born, DC-based Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi takes the cosmic view of the culture wars between the United States and Middle East. In her nearly psychedelic works, traditional Persian imagery and Modernist American painting techniques bleed together in pictures that are at once luminous and mesmerizing and turbulently unresolved. Throughout, tazhib patterns common to Arabic art and calligraphy are both subsumed by color and float above it. One is reminded of the dazzling effects of a chemical reaction, the results of which have yet to come.

“I Surrender To You, Ashen Lands And Blue Skies” is on view through June 29, 2019 at Hemphill, 1515 14th Street NW #300 Washington, DC.

4. Rodrigo Goda in “Surrealismo Tropicale” at AM Arte Moderna

Rodrigo Goda, Homenagem a Tinguely e a Formula do Blu Kleine (2015). Courtesy of AM Arte Moderna.

Brazilian artist Rodrigo Goda’s canvases are playful scenes of imaginary machine-like structures, covered everywhere with wheels, pinions, and cogs, but also more fanciful details, like flowers, streamers, and pinwheels. They are Duchampian and Dr. Seussian at once, and rendered in a style that has notes of street-art humor. 

“Surrealismo Tropicale” is on view through September 30, 2019, at AM Arte Moderna, Via Arnaldo Soldini, 6/A, Brescia.

5. Magali Reus in “Private Road” at Galerie Eva Presenhuber

Installation view of “Private Road,” 2019. Courtesy of Galerie Eva Presenhuber.

London-based Dutch sculptor Magali Reus combines and configures the objects of our daily existence with dream-like effect. In Dearest (Achilles), a recent work, a ladder-like structure is suspended horizontally, almost supine in its effect, with resin-cast shapes (a cowboy hat, the cast of a foot) fastened to it. It is a surreal and somehow poetic object. Artworks from several of her recent bodies of work are presented here in a manner that drives home Reus’s fascination with the unreal qualities of the objects of our daily lives.

“Private Road” is on view through June 23, 2019, at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, 39 Great Jones Street, New York.