5 Contemporary Artists Everyone's Talking About in 2025
The art world is constantly shifting, and 2025 is already shaping up to be a year defined by bold moves, new markets, and boundary-pushing creativity. From breakout solo shows to major fair debuts, these five artists are capturing serious attention. They’re showing up in key galleries, turning heads at institutions, and building collector buzz around the globe. These five emerging artists are redefining the boundaries of painting, sculpture, textiles, and installation—and they are shaping the visual language of 2025 and beyond.
1. Sasha Gordon (USA) – Psychological Figuration & Narrative Self-Portraiture
Background:
Born in 1998 in Somers, New York, Sasha Gordon graduated from RISD in 2020 and quickly gained widespread attention for her emotionally charged, hyperrealist figurative works.
Artistic Focus:
Gordon’s paintings are lush, surreal, and deeply personal—centering on themes of identity, gender, race, and queerness through the lens of self-portraiture. But more than just autobiographical, her work is about psychological multiplicity—how one self can contain many contradictions.
In her own words from her ICA Miami show:
"I'm interested in how our bodies carry memory—and how painting can hold that."
Her dreamlike figures often appear in domestic or natural environments, rendered with unsettling clarity, inviting both empathy and discomfort. Gordon’s ability to reflect on vulnerability with such confidence is what sets her apart from her peers.
Notable Exhibitions:
“Hands of Others,” Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2023)
Featured in Artforum, Frieze Magazine, Vogue, Artnet, and Art Basel Stories
Represented by Jeffrey Deitch and Matthew Brown
Work shown at Frieze Los Angeles, Art Basel Miami Beach
Market demand remains strong with works often placed directly in institutional or private collections
Why Watch:
Gordon is part of a wave of figurative painters redefining self-portraiture—not as literal documentation, but as fragmented emotional mapping.
🔗 Art Basel Feature
🔗 Instagram
🔗 Artnet News Article
2. Arturo Kameya (Peru) – Immersive Political Surrealism & Mixed Media Installation
Background:
Born in Lima in 1984, Arturo Kameya studied at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and later at the prestigious Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Now based between Amsterdam and Lima, his work has steadily gained global attention for its surreal and politically charged installations.
Artistic Focus:
Kameya builds hybrid environments that combine sculpture, painting, found materials, and video. His work merges personal memory with Peru’s socio-political chaos, weaving absurdist narratives that critique systems of power, nostalgia, and national identity. In his exhibitions, viewers enter spaces that feel part haunted house, part failed utopia.
In shows at GRIMM Gallery and the New Museum Triennial, Kameya has explored everything from the legacy of authoritarianism to spiritual folklore and fast food iconography. His practice is immersive and cinematic—blurring lines between satire and sincerity.
Notable Exhibitions:
“Asymmetries,” GRIMM Gallery, New York (2023)
22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo (2023)
New Museum Triennial, New York (2021)
Represented by GRIMM Gallery (New York / Amsterdam)
Work shown at Art Basel Miami and Independent New York
Kameya’s installations are gaining traction among European institutional collectors and curators of Latin American contemporary art.
Why Watch:
Kameya is building some of the most visually and intellectually ambitious installations in Latin American contemporary art. His work is both deeply rooted in place and resonant far beyond Peru’s borders.
3. JIlana Savdie (USA) – Abstract & Magical Surrealist Painting
Background:
Born in 1986 in Miami and raised between Barranquilla, Colombia and the U.S., Ilana Savdie earned her MFA from Yale in 2018. She now lives and works in Brooklyn and has become one of the most watched painters of her generation.
Artistic Focus:
Savdie creates large-scale, visceral abstract paintings that oscillate between the grotesque and the sensual. Using a kaleidoscopic color palette and fluid, almost bodily forms, she explores themes of performance, transformation, and hybridity. Her work resists easy categorization, drawing on carnival, drag, prosthetics, and the theatrical as metaphors for multiplicity and power.
In a 2024 interview with W Magazine, Savdie discussed how her background in photography and printmaking informs her paintings:
"Painting wasn’t initially the goal. But the performativity of the medium—the drama and messiness of it—felt like the right vehicle to talk about mutation and spectacle."
Her process often begins digitally before being translated into oil, acrylic, and beeswax on canvas. The result is work that feels both meticulously orchestrated and wildly alive—grotesque in places, euphoric in others.
Notable Exhibitions & Market Presence:
Solo show, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2023–2024)
Whitney Biennial, New York (2022)
White Cube, London (2024)
Represented by White Cube and previously by Kohn Gallery
Work exhibited at Art Basel Miami Beach and Frieze London
Quickly becoming a collector favorite among new-generation abstraction buyers; buzz growing in both US and UK markets
Why Watch:**
Savdie’s paintings feel like living organisms—rich with tension, metamorphosis, and movement. As abstraction continues to evolve, her emotionally charged, body-forward aesthetic is defining a new era.
🔗 Instagram
🔗 Website
🔗 Conversations: Louise Giovanelli, Danica Lundy, Ilana Savdie with Hettie Judah | White Cube
4. Kennedy Yanko (USA) – Material-Driven Abstraction & Sculptural Alchemy
Background:
Born in 1988 in St. Louis, Kennedy Yanko is a self-taught sculptor based in Brooklyn, NY. She emerged through experimental performance and painting before transitioning into large-scale sculptural work, combining salvaged metal and poured paint skins into unified, lyrical forms.
Artistic Focus:
Yanko’s practice is rooted in transformation. She manipulates rigid industrial materials into works that appear soft and fluid, inviting a reconsideration of weight, memory, and perception. Her process involves sourcing discarded metal, shaping it through physical engagement, and integrating it with malleable, dried paint—her signature "paint skins."
Notable Exhibitions & Market Presence:
“Humming on Life,” Vielmetter Los Angeles (2023)
Salon 94, New York; Tilton Gallery
Art Basel Miami Beach, The Armory Show, EXPO Chicago
Collected by Rubell Museum, ICA Miami, and Beth Rudin DeWoody
Represented by Vielmetter Los Angeles and Salon 94
Her work is actively sought by collectors and museums focused on post-minimalist sculpture and Black abstraction
Why Watch:
Yanko's bold approach to material, gesture, and scale is redefining what contemporary sculpture can look and feel like. Her work speaks to a resurgence in materially focused abstraction that’s both historically aware and emotionally immediate.
5. Wendy Park (USA) – Contemplative Pattern-Based Abstraction & Cultural Minimalism
Background:
Wendy Park is a Los Angeles-based painter represented by Various Small Fires. Her work blends Korean textile patterns, abstraction, and botanical still life into serene, meditative compositions.
Artistic Focus:
Park’s surfaces are careful, subtle, and deeply considered. She often builds delicate rhythms through repetition and variation, combining historical motifs with contemporary color palettes. Her quiet, intentional works invite close looking and slow appreciation.
Notable Exhibitions:
Various Small Fires (Los Angeles and Seoul)
Group shows across the West Coast and Asia
Why Watch:
At a time when maximalism dominates, Park’s poetic restraint and cross-cultural nuance offer a refreshing counterpoint.
🔗 Website
🔗 Instagram