As autumn falls upon the city, the familiar ritual of collectors, artists and gallerists herald in a plentiful season of openings, art fairs and events. A cycle of aspiration and momentum unfolds. Unlike last spring, when the art world was absorbed into the gravitational pull of blue-chip names, trumped by the Koons bonanza, the highlights of this fall gallery season feel fresher and brimming with new energy and excitement.

Here are the artists who will be making a mark on New York this fall. Of significant note, all but one are presenting their first solo shows with the respective gallery. As well, the attention is much less Chelsea-centric and diffused across the city.

Jon Rafman – You are standing in an open field

Zach Feuer

548 W 22nd St, New York

September 12 – October 26, 2013

The works of Rafman will be familiar to those who saw him transform the lobby of Hannah Barry’s Peckham Pavilion at the Venice Biennale by covering every object and interior entirely in a Georgia O’Keeffe motif. Known for his Google Street View image appropriations, the artist will have his first solo show at Zach Feuer this fall. You are standing in an open field presents an odyssey through virtual landscapes, exploring online worlds, hybrid cultures and manifestations of memory through sculptures, videos and mixed media installations. It is bound to be a sensory feast.

Lucien Smith – Nature is my Church

Salon 94

243 Bowery, New York and 1 Freeman Alley, New York

September 13 – October 25, 2013

There are very few contemporary art collectors who have not heard of, and begged their art consultants for a Lucien Smith. The momentum which has surrounded this young artist is incredible and he’s had shows at OHWOW, Half Gallery and Suzanne Geiss in the last year and a half. A west coast transplant, closely associated with the Brooklyn artist-run organization The Still House Group, he is part of the new New York generation re-envisioning conceptual and process based art. The show at Salon 94 Nature is My Church, continues in his multi-media aims to transverse a ‘spectrum of styles and concepts’ by creating works which both explicitly comprise and embody the greater entity of his oeuvre.

Marman + Borins – Pavilion of the Blind

Tierney Gardarin Gallery

546 West 29th Street

September 12 – October 26, 2013

Newly merged Tierney Gardarin Gallery is starting their fall season with Canadian duo, Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, whose talent at home has earned them steady critical praise and growing recognition abroad. The show is called Pavilion of the Blind and will feature works which deconstruct perception, surveillance and the relationship of the viewer to the art object. Their wickedly smart Kosuthian approach playfully pokes fun at the nature of art and incorporates interactive elements into their installations.Title piece, Pavilion of the Blind will be a structure made of colorful array of window blinds, panels and shades whose movement is triggered by motion sensors. The mechanical installation arranges and rearranges itself into a series of constantly changing abstract compositions.

Cary Leibowitz – (Paintings and Belt Buckles)

Invisible Exports

September 6 – October 13, 2013

89 Eldridge Street, New York

This LES gallery’s program has been on my radar and certainly not surprising that Invisible Exports is moving to a new space on Eldridge Street. They are inaugurating it with their first show of Cary Leibowitz, the artist also known as Candy Ass. Leibowitz first established himself as a prankster-critic and part of the ‘Pathetic Aesthetic’ in the 1990s. His reductionist paintings present “everyday experience not as objects of reverence but occasions for scrutiny and absurdity” through the use of cheeky text and repeating canvases in array of play-dough colors. The buckles are a nod to fantasy dress up and a childlike view of the world. The canvas works feel fresh and preserve a self-deprecating naivete, which makes them as befitting a LES space as any RISD grad.

Ben Wolf Noam, Greg Parma Smith, and Korakrit Arunanondchai – Digital Expressionism

Suzanne Geiss

76 Grand St, New York

September 5 – October 19, 2013

This three person show of new works by Ben Wolf Noam, Greg Parma Smith, and Korakrit Arunanondchai promises to “explore the half-life of material art objects in an age dominated by digital forms.” By both mimicking the online realm and using it as a point of departure to their process, the artists strive to translate the binary back into analog. Part performance, part temple for the digital age – this show will clash processes and aesthetics in one grand spectacle.

Bjarne Melgaard – Ignorant Transparencies

Gavin Brown’s enterprise

September 14 – October 26, 2013

620 Greenwich St, New York

Bjarne Melgaard is a New York-based, Norwegian artist who writes novels, likes big cats and avoids any form of categorization. Last year he showed tiger cubs at Ramiken Crucible, built a Mary Boone shrine at the Armory and his vivid playroom-like solo presentation at Gavin Brown’s Frieze NY booth had every fashion editor rushing there for ‘street style’ inspiration. The show Ignorant Transparencies is sure to be equally unpredictable. If you need more reason to see it, The New York Times best attempt at describing Melgaard was that he “has been called the most famous Norwegian artist since Munch.” That’s saying something.

Elad Lassry

Gallery 303

September 13 – October 26, 2013

507 W 24th St, New York

Kicking off the fall season in the two-year temporary location, Gallery 303 will be presenting the first exhibition with the Israeli-born, LA-based artist Elad Lassry. The show is based on his fabricated, reproduced pictures, which breach parameters of photography and morph into sculpture, yet remain uncertain of which realm they occupy. Lassry works with images culled from advertising, films, illustrated magazines, and commercial catalogues – altered from their original context to create destabilized signifiers. His works are often compact and his photographs are rigorously formatted to never exceed the dimensions of a magazine page.

Gladys Nilsson and Julia Benjamin – New Works

The National Exemplar

September 9 – October 19, 2013

381 Broadway, 2nd floor, New York

This show will pair two artists from varying generations. Gladys Nilsson born in 1940, is an original member member of the Chicago Imagists, a group who turned to unique pop-representation and surrealism after the war. Julia Benjamin, born in 1984, is a recent graduate of the Columbia MFA and makes abstract paintings with dabs of color. The charged interplay between the two is bound to be wonderful. This gallery is not one to lack vision and what show is next is always a surprise (and a treat). Last year presented exhibits with Adam McEwen, Dan Colen & Nate Lowman, Sebastian Black and Peter Coffin, so doubtless this will be a great season ahead.

Harold Ancart – ANACONDA STANDARD

C L E A R I N G Gallery

September 13 – October 27, 2013

505 Johnson Avenue # 10, Brooklyn

Although this is the only artist on the list for whom the show is not their first with the gallery, this exhibition marks the start of the sixth season of the Brussels-Brooklyn space, and has me excited. Ancart’s works are encounters of traces, surfaces and physical space. They often take the shape of stressed paintings, off-kilter minimalist objects and color photographs with flame licks burned across them – objects instilled with vast amounts of agency. Ancart uses chance and repetition to coerce this material force with great skill.

Hayv Kahraman – Let the Guest Be the Master

Jack Shainman Gallery

September 10 – October 12, 2013

513 West 20th Street, New York

Jack Shainman Gallery will present the first New York solo show of Iraqi-born, San-Francisco based artist Hayv Kahraman. Her delicate works echo Islamic and Persian traditional motifs and are painted on wooden panels with flat planes filled with pattern. Her practice grapples with issues surrounding female identity of her homeland while embodying a stoic poeticism and lyrical elegance. The figurative paintings depict women and weave narratives with deep cultural resonance. In this show she “explores private and public spaces through the lens of the disenfranchised, specifically women and immigrants.”