Artsy: five standout shows at small galleries this September

Katie White's monthly round-up of small galleries worth the trip. Juana González paints hands, at Arma in Madrid. Mark Francis shows colour-based abstraction at Bernhard Knaus in Frankfurt. Olayami Dabls, from Detroit, debuts large mixed-media works built from African materials at Matéria. Mathieu Cherkit paints his own house at Semiose in Paris, on an unusual schedule. And at SPACE SO in Seoul, Bang Soyun and Jaiyoung Cho work through the body in paint and sculpture.

What I take from it. Small galleries are where painting is still allowed to be about paint. Mark Francis working purely in colour and Cherkit painting the same rooms over and over are two versions of a thing I recognise: pick a narrow problem and stay on it. The narrow problem here is what black does on white when you throw it.

Read the full story at Artsy — Katie White, 4 September 2026.