Five Galleries to Watch in 2025

NIKA Project Space, Dubai and Paris

Focusing on artists from Central Asia, Latin America and the MENA region, NIKA Projects Space was founded in 2022 in Dubai’s Al Khayat Avenue. The gallery takes its name from founder Veronika Berezina, a small-scale collector who studied international law before deciding to open her own space. There has been an influx of new galleries and institutions in Dubai in recent years, but what sets NIKA apart is the emphasis on performance, a medium that is still underrepresented in the UAE. Last year, NIKA opened a second space in Paris, an important step in Berezina’s goal to give international exposure to artists from overlooked regions. The beginning of 2025 will see the first show by Honduran-born, Beirut-based artist Adrian Pepe at the gallery and a group show on artists from Central Asia.

CYLINDER, Seoul

Dooyong Ro may be an ‘unsuccessful artist’ but CYLINDER – the gallery he started in his former studio – has been anything but a failure. As well as launching the careers of many young artists, CYLINDER won the Focus Asia Stand Prize at Frieze Seoul in 2023 and was the first Korean gallery to show at LISTE Art Fair in 2024. As a self-described ‘car addict’, Dooyong Ro’s shows often have a tech angle; his inaugural exhibition, ‘AI VS AI’ pitted artistic intelligence against artificial intelligence and many subsequent exhibitions at the gallery have been named after vehicle parts or technological functions. The series ‘TORQUE’, for instance, supports undergraduates at the beginning of their careers. In February, the 5th edition of the series will launch at CYLINDER ONE, while CYLINDER TWO, a space Dooyong Ro started in 2023 to focus on established artists and bigger projects, will host ‘Soft Stratum’, a group show with Rim Park, Niklas Asker, Sungho Bae and Hyunseog Oh.

Sea View, Los Angeles

A veteran of the LA gallery scene, Sara Lee Hantman never intended to open her own space but took ‘a leap of faith’ after getting the opportunity to rent a house and ‘social sculpture’ designed by Jorge Pardo at the top of the historic Mount Washington neighborhood in Los Angeles. The resulting gallery, Sea View, opened in 2023 and features artists linked by what Hantman calls ‘a physical sense of time and materiality’. In 2025, Sea View will host an exhibition of new paintings by Japanese artist Yu Kobayashi in conversation with functional sculpture by Joshua Tree-based artist, Dan John Anderson opening mid-January. The gallery will also present the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles by New York-based artist Jay Payton during Frieze LA in February.

a. SQUIRE, London

Research-orientated and artist-led, a. SQUIRE was opened in 2023 as a result of Archie Squire’s desire to push conversations forward, he says, ‘on issues of the institution, on sex and homosociality, technological mediation, climate change and the moral landscapes of the 2020s’. Rather than courting commercial success, a. SQUIRE has gained a reputation for showing more difficult practices, which is refreshing in a scene that often seems to focus on painting to the exclusion of other mediums. Forthcoming highlights at the gallery include the second exhibition by Ceidra Moon Murphy, which will act as a preface to her first institutional solo exhibition at Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, E-WERK, Freiburg in February, and more installments of the ‘Pollen Society’, a programme-within-a-programme foregrounding urgent ecological matters.

Schiefe Zähne, Berlin

Schiefe Zähne was founded in 2017 by Hannes Schmidt as an artist-run space in his former studio before transitioning into a commercial gallery shortly afterwards. In 2023, the gallery moved into a more central location on Berlin’s Potsdamer Strasse and now represents an intergenerational group of artists, including Matthias Groebel and Philipp Simon, who are linked by their interest in the cultural and political realities that underpin their practices. In 2025, a number of artists on the Schiefe Zähne roster will open important solo institutional exhibitions throughout Europe. Angharad Williams, who had a critically acclaimed show with the gallery during last year’s Gallery Weekend, will have an exhibition at Simian, Copenhagen, at the end of January, and Ariane Müller will show at the Vienna Secession in the summer.

_{Main image: Eli Coplan, ‘US TV AND FILM’, 2024, exhibition view, a. SQUIRE, London. Courtesy: the artist and a. SQUIRE, London; Photograph: Ben Westoby}