Small galleries are offering some of the clearest signals in contemporary art this May, and the month’s lineup stretches from Switzerland to Texas. A new roundup of exhibitions highlights four shows that move between fractured painting, ecological inquiry, political imagery, and figurative work, with each venue giving a different shape to the present tense.
In Goldau, Switzerland, Kutlesa is presenting “Hand, Body, Object, Sin” by British-born, Amsterdam-based painter K. T. Kobel through May 29. Kobel, who has shown in cities including Los Angeles and Milan since 2022, builds each new work from four painted scenes stacked vertically inside a single wooden frame. The result is compact but disorienting: a sequence of images that feels closer to a storyboard than a single resolved picture. Using pigment transfer, acrylic, and encaustic, the artist creates a hazy surface that holds together taboo, tension, and suggestion. In works such as “Practice Makes Permanent” and “An Exit Without Leaving,” a hissing black cat, a screaming mouth, and a black latex bodysuit push the imagery toward horror without ever settling into narrative certainty.
Barcelona’s Al-Tiba9 Gallery is showing “Terra Incognita (Unknown Land) – Part II” from May 14 to July 25. The group exhibition brings together Andy Storchenegger, Dongbay, Nicolas Vionnet, Ching-ke Lin, and the duo Dan Molin & Milani. Storchenegger’s three-channel film, “Nobody is Okay” (2022), is paired with Marita Banda’s poetry; Dongbay suspends decorated animal pelts and recycled Carhartt textiles within metal scaffolding; Ching-ke Lin turns bamboo into whirling, futuristic forms; and Dan Molin & Milani contribute “Muletto” (2022), a motorized fitting room that shifts an intimate space into something industrial. Vionnet, the only artist to appear in both editions of the project, contributes melancholy landscapes and a sculpture of an impractical skateboard fitted with crutches.
At Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels, Iranian-born, American-based photographer and filmmaker Sheida Soleimani presents “Flyways” through June 27. The exhibition brings together work from “Ghostwriter” and “Flyways,” and debuts the film “Wave” (2025). Soleimani’s practice links political violence, exile, and care, including her work with injured migratory birds.
Rounding out the month, Patrick Puckett’s “Daze of Our Lives” is on view at Wally Workman Gallery in Austin from May 9 to May 31. Taken together, these exhibitions suggest a season in which small galleries are doing what they often do best: testing how much ambiguity, urgency, and formal invention a viewer can hold at once.
