Azadeh Nia, Through the Orange Trees, 2026, acrylic on panel, 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm.)

Azadeh Nia Solo Exhibition

December 9, 2026-January 13, 2027

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST:
https://bit.ly/BrittneyLeeanneWilliams-Huddle-Checklist

Alexander Berggruen is pleased to present Azadeh Nia: Blue Hour, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with the artist. This exhibition will open Wednesday, December 9 with a 6-8 pm reception at the gallery (1018 Madison Avenue, Floor 3, New York, NY).

Azadeh Nia paints precise, imagined landscapes that hint at human influence and verge on surreal, dystopian portrayals of modern life. Inspired by the landscape of her home in Tehran, Iran, often present in her work are Tehran’s prominent silent volcano Mount Damavand, orange trees, rolling hills, and gardens. These idyllic natural elements are met with both flourishing and abandoned urban artifacts, collapsing various timescales into one image.

Azadeh Nia, Blue Hour, 2026, acrylic on panel, 48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm.)

While Nia painted this body of work from her home in Brooklyn, Iran moved through an uprising, a brutal crackdown, and war. She received images of violence and loss slowly, when internet connection in Iran allowed. Speaking about the paintings she produced during this time, she stated, “These imagined landscapes grew out of that grief, as well as a more enduring fascination with nature, ruins, and the passage of time. I am drawn to the fragile and the fading, to the possibility that what appears to be an ending might also contain the beginnings of something else.” Gardens bloom, and majestic skies perform over dilapidated relics. A tree grows out of a dark opening. Mountains stand firmly above quiet cities. In the distance of several works, paths and roads wind through nature like those in the films of Abbas Kiarostami. Although the details of the landscapes vary, symbols of persistence are recurrent motifs in Nia’s paintings.

Nia’s landscapes resist idealism through the inclusion of realistic and surreal gestures toward the individual human lives that existed there before and exist there now. In the exhibition’s eponymous painting Blue Hour, many lights are on in the apartment buildings, where a close viewer can see references to interiors, such as a Setar—an Iranian musical instrument—hanging inside someone’s window. At times, the hints at human presence are subtly violent. Also in the painting Blue Hour, apples lie on concrete beside blood spatter, and in In The Mountains, Flower By Flower, They’re Planting The Sun, a car burns in the distance. At other times, the gestures are mercurial. There are holes in the ground in Nearly There and Farda. In Playground, a chain link swing remains still, even amidst a wind that moves the ribbons on a scooter in the foreground and smoke in the distance. Informed in part by photographers of disjointed daily life like Julie Blackmon, Nia’s scenes too offer a staged, structured, surreal portrayal of domestic life.

Azadeh Nia, Migration, 2026, acrylic on panel, 30 x 30 in. (76.2 x 76.2 cm.)

Working intuitively from memory and imagination, Nia’s depictions of nature and daily life are inspired by her own experiences in Iran and in New York City. Unable to visit Iran amidst political turmoil, Nasrollah Kasraian’s photobook Damavand, which features a collection of images of the titular mountain, was a key reference to Nia. Working in this manner allowed Nia the freedom to infuse her paintings with surrealism. In Two Skies, a mountain landscape under a blue sky is cleaved as it gives way to the side of a building in an urban environment under a bruised purple sky, much like the inconsistent light in paintings by René Magritte. Similarly, her painting Lightning Over Water depicts red roses emerging from the snow and lightning in the distance, both rare occurrences in the winter. Akin to Gertrude Abercrombie, Nia peppers surrealism into her paintings sparsely and often over recurrent motifs. Most common for Nia are the crumbling relics that emerge in surprising places, such as out of the water in Migration. Ladders are another recurring motif, emerging from or descending beyond the edges of the composition, an invitation to imagine the past and the future.

Azadeh Nia, Homecoming, 2026, acrylic on panel, 48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm.)

A watery first layer of paint is the foundation for Nia’s work. Occasionally, this can be seen in loose, dripping or seeping paint within broad expanses like the sky or a wall. Then, Nia refines the scene with precise details, often dextrously using miniscule brushes. The flat surface of the wood panel amplifies her precision. Trees and buildings often act as asymmetrical framing devices in Nia’s paintings. Her approach to buildings and manmade structures emphasizes their sharp edges and angles, revealing their underlying geometric forms, similar to the cityscapes of George Ault.

Nia’s paintings invite contemplation about the coexistence of fragility and stability within nature and human life. Where flowers, fruits, and the rising and setting of the sun are fleeting, elements like mountains and stars in the sky are more constant. The mountains and built forms remind a viewer of the immense force that created them and that resilience is dynamic. Speaking about this body of work, Nia stated, “These paintings exist in the suspended moment between an ending and a beginning, where loss remains present but life, against all odds, finds a way to return.”

Press release by Kirsten Cave, adapted from the artist’s statement.

Azadeh Nia in the studio, Brooklyn, NY, 2026. Photo: Daniel Greer

About the Artist

Azadeh Nia (b. 1988, Tehran, Iran) received an MFA from the University of The Arts London and a BA from University of Science And Culture in Tehran, Iran. Her work has been exhibited at the Dallas Art Fair with Alexander Berggruen; Fridman Gallery, New York, NY; Hashimoto Contemporary, New York, NY; Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; Gallery Fritz, Santa Fe, NM; Mill Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM; and Simons Contemporary, London, UK. Nia was an artist in residence at Silver Arts Projects, New York, NY; Wassaic Project Artist Residency, NY; and Ucross Residency, WY. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

This is the gallery’s first solo show with the artist following her inclusion in the gallery’s group presentation at the Dallas Art Fair in 2025.

The exhibition will be on view December 9, 2026-January 13, 2027. For all inquiries, please contact info@alexanderberggruen.com.

Editorial

Emma Fineman on “Devotion,” Her Solo Exhibition at Alexander Berggruen, NY

On the occasion of Alexander Berggruen’s current exhibition Emma Fineman: Devotion (May 19-June 24, 2026), we’re pleased to share a video of the artist speaking about her work in her studio. Video by Dina Paola Rodriguez

Press

Bye Bye, American Sky

WORLD OF INTERIORS

A neglected stone cottage in his native windswept Cornwall beckoned to the artist Danny Fox, who put his years in sunny Los Angeles behind him and, with the assistance of friends and reclaimed materials, created a home for himself and the folk-art objects that have shaped his work.

Fox was raised in nearby St Ives, the tiny fishing village where his family home was a few doors down from where celebrated naive artist Alfred Wallis once lived. Having made art from an early age, at 17 Fox left home for London in search of glory. There began a nomadic period in which he moved between jobs – labourer, pot washer, decorator, barman – while still painting through the nights, a habit he keeps to this day. London was followed by stints in Hastings and Cardiff, before he eventually returned to the capital.

Throughout the house, salvaged pieces and vernacular craftsmanship reveal an artist whose life has been shaped as much by collecting and scavenging as by painting. Works by Henry Taylor, Eddie Martinez and Wes Lang hang among home-made sculptures and curious finds, while a rare work by Wallis provides a fitting anchor.

Danny Fox: Fata Morgana runs 9 September to 7 October 2026 at Alexander Berggruen, New York.

Reveling in Enigma: Emma Fineman’s Paintings Reveal the Inner-Self as a Double

ARTFORUM

Now on view at Alexander Berggruen, Emma Fineman’s paintings appear, paradoxically, both solid and ethereal, as though made from a fusion of rock and vapor. The artist creates heft through architectonic composition and relief-like facture, often giving structure by dividing the image into discrete zones of color.

I see her work as not questing for knowledge but reveling in enigma, enacting what queer theorists such as Judith Butler and Michael Snediker have identified as more integrated ways of experiencing personhood, not divided between a true interior and a false surface. This is most evident in Lambda, where the central figure personifies the mutability of meaning that the painting’s form enacts. We see a beatific jade-colored face beneath what appears to be a partially lifted red mask. But while the woman’s left leg and nipple bear the same green hue, the limb does not seem to emerge from underneath the ruddy torso so much as extend from where the crimson expires at the hip. If anything, the nipple’s higher value and greater saturation drive it optically past the surrounding reds behind which we expect it to be lurking. Whereas we ordinarily think of masks as concealing faces, this happily doubled figure suggests two selves intertwining in a body divided, neither entity more real than the other. In this weighty but floating world, we need not mine for inner truth but allow ourselves to linger on the enigmatic surface.

Household Objects of the ’90s, Recreated in Clay

THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

Artist Stephanie Shih conjures a poignant domestic drama by recreating the symbols of temptation, vice, convenience and self-improvement that defined American life in the 1990s.

In Domestic Bliss, a tenderly realized portrait of American life in the 1990s at Alexander Berggruen in New York, the artist Stephanie Shih draws us into a fraught family narrative.

The artist builds the pieces by hand, using a fine brush to decorate their surfaces. There are subtle signs that each object is handmade, evoking the crafted pop sensibility of Corita Kent or Liza Lou — a slightly dappled finish here, a hint of hand lettering there. The net result is the uncanny feeling that the whole room has been seen, recorded, lost, then lovingly recreated, each element conjured by a human being with a memory that aches.

Publications

Cara Nahaul: Tender Island

Cara Nahaul: Tender Island was published on the occasion of the gallery’s eponymous exhibition, which will run from April 10-May 8, 2024. This catalogue features a foreword by Kirsten Cave and an interview between Cara Nahaul and writer, editor, and curator Anneka French, which took place in February 2024.

Purchase