At the Artnet Gallery Network, our goal is to discover new artists each and every month. We sift through the thousands of talented artists on our site to select a few we find particularly intriguing right now.

Amid many new shows opening this month, we’ve chosen five artists on view that we think you should know about with shows in Cologne, Izmir, Los Angeles, and beyond.

Bennu Gerede at Be Contemporary, Izmir, Turkey

Bennu Gerede, The Shadow (2021). Courtesy of Be Contemporary.

Turkish artist Bennu Gerede’s electrically colorful photographs explore the imagery of women, their bodies, gender, and sexuality. Her subtly erotic imagery — which ranges from female nudes to imagery of flowers and vegetables — invites viewers to rethink the body in a manner reminiscent of Richard Mapplethorpe’s photographs

Pedro Álvarez at Track 16 Gallery, Los Angeles

Pedro Álvarez, A Trip to Heaven (2003). Courtesy of Track 16 Gallery.

Cuban artist Pedro Álvarez Castelló (1967–2004) made paintings that blend together pop culture references with visions of traditional Cuban culture. The works incorporate fragments of images culled from magazines, books, old postcards, and paintings which the artist intuitively reimagines into complex visions of Cuban life. 

Zohar Fraiman, “Show Me Your Sheroes“ at Priska Pasquer, Cologne

Zohar Fraiman, Muffin Palace (2020). Courtesy of Priska Pasquer.

Zohar Fraiman’s colorful large-scale paintings are full of lively ambiguity. Her works explore how female identities are formed and reconstructed in digital spaces from dating apps and social media. Fraiman’s work humorously critiques the internet phenomenon of self-staging and its distorted results. 

Chiffon Thomas in “Antithesis,” Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles

Chiffon Thomas, Untitled (2020). Courtesy of Kohn Gallery.

New Haven-based artist Chiffon Thomas weaves together a vast assortment of mixed media including embroidery, collage, sculpture, and painting to create hauntingly enigmatic artworks in which limbs and faces become emerge from architectural elements. 

Amandine Urruty  “The Most Incredible Things” in Magma Gallery, Bologna

Amandine Urruty, Pieces (2020). Courtesy of Magma Gallery.

Paris-based artist Amandine Urruty creates meticulously detailed large-scale graphite drawings in which fantastical creatures form mysterious tableaux which range from the fairytale-like to the grotesque.