As the artworld swings into gear, we speak to gallerists and artists about September's must-see shows 

Back to school: the eight shows not to miss in New York this month

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New York’s artworld returns in force this month. In Chelsea, Pace comes out swinging with a new, 75,000-square-foot headquarters, opening September 14, and a diverse slate of exhibitions that include Loie Hollowell and Alexander Calder. Downtown, on September 13, 47 Canal opens a solo show with Whitney Biennial favorite Janiva Ellis. Here, gallerists and artists take us through some of this fall’s highlights. Sarah Sze at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1292/Tanya-Bonakdar-Gallery" target="_blank">Tanya Bonakdar Gallery</a>, through October 17 Many artists are interdisciplinary, but few have been as savvy at breaking down barriers between media as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9862/Sarah-Sze" target="_blank">Sarah Sze</a>. Her latest exhibition, consuming both floors of this Chelsea gallery, offers a chance to step, quite literally, into the artist’s frenetic process. ‘It’s almost as if she has closed a circuit that incorporates painting, installation, and sculpture on an even plane, all in dialogue with one another,’ says the gallery’s senior director, Ethan Sklar. ‘She is giving us a tactile experience of the hypermediated world of images in which we find ourselves today.’ Christian Marclay at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1094/Paula-Cooper-Gallery" target="_blank">Paula Cooper Gallery</a>, through October 19 The centerpiece of this show is 48 War Movies, currently on view at the Venice Biennale, and enjoying its North American debut here. Consider it a disturbing complement to The Clock (2010), that crowd-pleasing blockbuster that stitched together 24 hours of vintage film footage into an entertaining rumination on time and plotlessness. As the title obviously suggests,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7045/Christian-Marclay" target="_blank">Christian Marclay</a> has dived into the archives of dozens of war movies to create one martial extravaganza, playing on an endless loop. ‘It’s truly overwhelming – provocative and distressing – but also hypnotically seductive,’ promises the gallery’s senior director, Steve Henry. ‘The film’s examination of violence and aggression is so poignant in these times – in any time, in fact.’ Hayv Kahraman at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1267/Jack-Shainman-Gallery" target="_blank">Jack Shainman Gallery</a>, through October 26 Born in Baghdad, and currently based in Los Angeles,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8630/Hayv-Kahraman" target="_blank">Hayv Kahraman</a> returns with spare new paintings and drawings depicting women in dramatic (or seemingly impossible) poses. Bodies are ruthlessly cramped, stacked, and confined within the picture plane. ‘With these figures taking on the role of contortionists, Kahraman has pushed the conventions of composition and challenged her own visual language,’ says Elisabeth Sann, a director at Jack Shainman. ‘The tensions within the subject matter and formal aspects of the work make this new series impossible to look away from, despite its unsettling nature.’&nbsp; &nbsp; Judith Hopf at<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1216/Metro-Pictures" target="_blank"> Metro Pictures</a>, through October 5 Brick by brick, Berlin-based&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7780/Judith-Hopf" target="_blank">Judith Hopf</a> is constructing her own offbeat fantasyland. In the past, the artist has presented gigantic hands, hewn from red brick, or a flock of lovable ‘sheep,’ constructed plainly from hunks of cement and bits of metal. Her debut solo outing with Metro Pictures features an enormous wall with a whole blasted through its center, disrupting the main space of the gallery. It’s joined by oversized pears, also carved out of brick, and aluminum sculptures of human tongues. ‘I tried to place my brick sculptures in the context of big-city life and architecture,’ Hopf reflects. ‘What if you could look through any wall? For sure, it would change not only the function but also [our] perspectives.’&nbsp;

Alex Prager at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1185/Lehmann-Maupin" target="_blank">Lehmann Maupin</a>, through October 26 New York audiences will be the first to experience&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11336/Alex-Prager" target="_blank">Alex Prager</a>’s latest film, Play the Wind, which&nbsp;Riley Keough (previously seen in American Honey and the highly underrated Under the Silver Lake). It’s an eight-minute ramble through the illusory, fictive landscape of Los Angeles, where the artist was born and raised. Elsewhere, a series of still photographs prove the artist’s knack for sneaking Hollywood drama into the white cube. In Big West (2019), a gigantic statue of a woman towers over an eclectic crowd in front of a Sears department store. And Yellow Pages (2019) condenses a feature film’s worth of intrigue into a single image: a cowboy on a payphone, and a woman lurking in the shadowy haze nearby. N. Dash at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1083/Casey-Kaplan" target="_blank">Casey Kaplan</a>, through October 26 Over the years,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8224/N-Dash" target="_blank">N. Dash</a> has been quietly building her reputation for quietly evocative minimalism. It’s hard to characterize this young artist’s work, which is either painterly sculpture or sculptural painting. A sensitivity to materials is a constant throughout her practice. Here, she reaches soulful heights with adobe, jute, Styrofoam, cardboard, and other media. The occasional image sneaks in, as in a handful of pieces that are silkscreened with dramatic photographs that the artist has taken of ragged textiles. Elaine Cameron-Weir at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1573/JTT" target="_blank">JTT</a>, through October 27 Imagined as a kind of cohesive installation, the latest from the Canadian sculptor&nbsp;<a href="http://www.jttnyc.com/6953,266301,453202" target="_blank">Elaine Cameron-Weir</a> is an exploration of an ‘aesthetic of utility and function,’ according to gallery owner, Jasmin Tsou. Six distinct sculptures, organized in pairs, populate the space, whose floor is tiled over with stainless-steel plates. Cameron-Weir has an eye for eclectic materials; the works here incorporate polished fluorite stone, rawhide, neon, candles, concrete fabric, and large telescope lenses (created by the artist’s father using glass repurposed from the home he grew up in). While JTT has shown the artist previously – at Sadie Coles in London, as part of the Condo initiative – this is its first solo exhibition with Cameron-Weir in New York. Henry Taylor at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1070/Blum-Poe" target="_blank">Blum &amp; Poe</a>, September 24–November 2 The Los Angeles-based artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11466/Henry-Taylor" target="_blank">Henry Taylor</a> is one of our most versatile contemporary portraitists, capturing his friends and peers and eulogizing traumatic events (such as the police shooting of Philando Castile). This time around, he ventures beyond the American experience. ‘Many of the paintings in the show were created during Taylor’s recent travels in Senegal,’ says a representative of the gallery. ‘They’re hatched from experiences he had there that triggered certain contemplations on the African diaspora, slavery, the origins of diverging routes of hegemony – and also on unity, and seeing oneself in the face of a stranger.’

Art Basel will announce the list of exhibiting&nbsp;galleries at Art Basel in Miami Beach on September 11th.&nbsp;Scott Indrisek is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New YorkTop image: Alex Prager,&nbsp;Play the Wind (detail), 2019. Film still.&nbsp;Courtesy of Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York City, Hong Kong, and Seoul.

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As the artworld swings into gear, we speak to gallerists and artists about September's must-see shows