De Buck Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in The Armory Show 2025 at the Javits Center in New York from September 5 to 7, with a VIP preview on September 4, at booth 138. Our presentation will bring together a carefully curated selection of works that set contemporary voices in dialogue with historically significant artists, creating a platform for discovery, exchange, and connection.
Introducing Rashid Al Khalifa
We are pleased to introduce the work of Bahrain-based artist Rashid Al Khalifa, whose reflective sculptural forms transform light and space into immersive experiences, inviting the viewer into a shifting play of perception and materiality.
At the booth, the gallery will feature a selection of works from Khalifa’s recent Spectrum series. As with a spectrum of color, Khalifa’s Spectrum works present a band of colors, created by a separation of the components of light by their degrees of refraction according to wavelength. As a spectrum moves from one color to another, its identity is altered. Each work in this series derives its effect from its placement within an environment and the emotional state of the viewer. It’s through these endless possibilities of color combinations that each work provokes a different feeling, sensation or thought process. Spectrum is in a sense the mediator, prompting a dialogue between the viewer and the artist.
Devan Shimoyama, Gommaar Gilliams, and Zak Ové
Alongside his practice, we present new and compelling works by Devan Shimoyama, Gommaar Gilliams, and Zak Ové, each exploring themes of identity, culture, and narrative in distinctive and powerful ways.
Shimoyama’s four new paintings are a continuation of his exploration of cartooning, anime and ideas surrounding transformation. Atsuko, Michiko, and Satoshi are all characters from an anime the artist watched in high school called Michiko & Hatchin, which the titular character was said to be inspired by 90s R&B singer Aaliyah, who was one of Shimoyama’s favorite singers.
Shimoyama was immediately fascinated by the worldbuilding of this fictional afro Latino city through the lens of Japanese animation, which felt like the hybridization within Shimoyama’s own identity as a person of Asian and Caribbean descent.
Gommaar Gilliams paintings invite viewers into lush, dreamlike spaces filled with celestial elements, mythic figures, and animals in whimsical motion. His archetypal figures—often shown journeying through fantastical landscapes—reflect universal stories and timeless human experiences.
Zak Ové creates sculpture, painting, film and photography that draws on his upbringing in London and Trinidad. His work is informed by the history and lore carried through the African diaspora to the Caribbean, Britain and beyond with particular focus on traditions of masking and masquerade as a tool of self-emancipation. His doily works on view reference the masquerade costumes traditionally donned at Canboulay, a harvest festival that involved dancing, chanting, music and masquerade in a process of transformation and exaltation beyond the limitations of colonial oppression.
These contemporary artists will be shown in conversation with seminal figures such as Robert Indiana, David Salle, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Leonor Fini, establishing a vibrant framework that bridges historical foundations with the urgency of the present.
Keith Haring: Subway Drawings
The De Buck Gallery booth will feature an intimate cabinet of Keith Haring’s subway drawings, works that pulse with the raw energy of 1980s New York street culture. These iconic pieces from a body of work that was celebrated at a landmark sale at Sotheby’s this past fall, resonate as powerfully today as when they first appeared underground, underscoring Haring’s lasting impact and the enduring relevance of his work, which still provokes and connects.
