October is a pivotal month for the art world. Major international fairs, solo debuts, and large-scale museum projects create a rich calendar that bridges summer’s close and the fall art season. This year, October art exhibitions 2025 span Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, highlighting how artists transform myth, music, and perception into cultural narratives that resonate worldwide.
Art Basel Paris 2025 (Paris)
Art Basel Paris returns to the renovated Grand Palais from October 24–26, with Preview Days on October 22 and 23. This edition features 206 leading galleries, including 180 in the main Galeries sector. Nearly a third of exhibitors have permanent spaces in Paris, reflecting the vitality of the French art market.
The fair’s Public Program activates nine iconic landmarks, with projects ranging from Julius von Bismarck at Petit Palais to Alex Da Corte on Place Vendôme. Oh La La!, directed by Loïc Prigent, explores the relationship between art and fashion under the theme À la mode. Conversations curated by Edward Enninful and monumental sculptures on avenue Winston-Churchill strengthen ties between the fair and the city.
Paris’s avant-garde heritage remains central. Movements from Cubism to Situationism were born here, and today’s presentations affirm the city’s position as the fourth-largest art market worldwide. By situating itself under the Grand Palais’s glass roof, Art Basel Paris 2025 confirms Paris as both historic cradle and future driver of contemporary creativity.
Website: artbasel.com/paris | Instagram: @artbasel
Lynne Drexler: A Painted Aria (New York)
Berry Campbell Gallery presents Lynne Drexler: A Painted Aria from October 9 through November 15. This exhibition focuses on the 1970s, when Drexler immersed herself in opera, attending The Metropolitan Opera several times a week. Her canvases transformed music into rhythm, movement, and tonal color.
Around twenty works reveal this transformation, including six large-scale canvases rarely seen together. The exhibition highlights how Drexler’s brushwork echoed her passion for Wagner and Beethoven, as well as her deep admiration for artists like Kandinsky. The catalogue essay by art historian Gail Levin situates her within a lineage of painters who sought to fuse sound and image.
For Drexler, music became an emotional lifeline, helping her convert personal struggles into triumphant artistic expression. The exhibition builds on Berry Campbell’s 2022 collaboration with Mnuchin Gallery, but shifts focus to this highly personal chapter. The gallery will also host performances by The Metropolitan Opera, creating a multisensory encounter that links painting and performance.
Website: berrycampbell.com | Instagram: @berrycampbell
Jana Brike: When I Was a River (Los Angeles)
Corey Helford Gallery presents When I Was a River by Latvian-born surrealist painter Jana Brike, opening October 11. On view through November 15, the exhibition is a meditation on Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as sacred elements of the human journey.
Brike, born in Soviet-occupied Latvia in 1980, developed a symbolic visual language grounded in mythology and nature. Her works depict dreamlike figures who inhabit spaces between the visible and the spiritual. In this new series, she uses the four elements as thresholds that link the body, memory, and transcendence.
The opening coincides with two additional exhibitions: The Weight of Us by Nigerian hyper-realist artists Arinze Stanley and Oscar Ukonu, and Where Petals Dance by Japanese artist aica. Together, they highlight CHG’s role as a hub for global contemporary voices.
Website: coreyhelfordgallery.com | Instagram: @coreyhelfordgallery
Rajni Perera: දුම් ලෝකය (Dhum Lōkaya) (Los Angeles)
Rajiv Menon Contemporary presents Rajni Perera’s දුම් ලෝකය (Dhum Lōkaya), her American solo debut, from October 15 to November 8. Perera, born in Sri Lanka and raised in Canada, merges science fiction with myth to reimagine the immigrant experience.
The exhibition includes more than fifteen new works, from corporeal sculptures to paintings and drawings. Hybrid figures, monsters, and animals populate her mythic landscapes, while the feminine body emerges as a central form of resilience and resistance. By reworking archetypes through a feminist and decolonial lens, Perera positions myth as a living tool of survival and understanding.
Her practice, which gained recognition at the 2023 Armory Show, expands the conversation on South Asian contemporary art in the United States. At Rajiv Menon Contemporary’s Hollywood space, දුම් ලෝකය becomes both personal cosmology and collective call for reimagined futures.
Website: rmcontemporary.com | Instagram: @rmcontemporary
Charles Atlas: Hail the New Puritan (Miami Beach)
The Bass presents Charles Atlas: Hail the New Puritan through October 19. This landmark film, created in 1985–86, documents a fictionalized day in the life of choreographer Michael Clark. Fusing classical ballet with punk and queer subcultures, Atlas redefined how performance could be captured on film.
The work’s mock-documentary style reveals the energy of 1980s London, where movement became a form of defiance and identity. Decades later, the piece resonates with today’s interdisciplinary practices, from performance art to fashion. At The Bass, its presentation complements immersive installations by assume vivid astro focus, sparking dialogue across generations.
Website: thebass.org | Instagram: @thebassmoa
Carlos Cruz-Diez: Chromosaturation (Miami)
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) unveils Carlos Cruz-Diez: Chromosaturation on October 2. Conceived in 1965, the installation immerses visitors in chambers of red, green, and blue light, altering perception through pure color.
Cruz-Diez, a pioneer of kinetic and optical art, challenged static notions of painting by making color a participatory experience. His Chromosaturation installations became touchstones of 1960s experimental practices, emphasizing perception as dynamic and embodied. Miami, with its light-filled architecture and Caribbean connections, offers a fitting backdrop for this presentation.
Website: pamm.org | Instagram: @pamm
Looking Ahead
October art exhibitions 2025 present a sweeping journey through contemporary creativity. In Paris, the Grand Palais hosts a global fair that celebrates the avant-garde. In New York, Lynne Drexler’s music-infused canvases return to view, while Los Angeles highlights surrealism and speculative mythologies. Miami brings kinetic light and groundbreaking performance back into focus.
Together, these shows remind us how art continues to illuminate, challenge, and reimagine the world. They also set the stage for Miami Art Week, where Art Basel Miami Beach and its satellite fairs unite the global art market—a week I look forward to covering in upcoming features.
