Ceramic Highlights: Frieze New York 2026

From ceramic photography to nostalgia for the analog age, clay surfaced throughout Frieze New York and these seven galleries were the ones to find.

By: MoCA/NY

May 21, 2026

The Shed
545 W 30th St
New York, NY 10001

Frieze New York's 15th edition returned to the Shed with 68 galleries from 26 countries, drawing 25,000 visitors over five days. Among the ceramic highlights was Chapter NY, which featured Alix Vernet's lustrous glaze wall sculptures and the work of Erin Jane Nelson, currently showing in the Whitney Biennial. Nelson's photographs are captured using a pinhole camera, itself a sculptural ceramic vessel, with longer exposure times bleeding landscape into layers of hazy, suspended movement.

Perrotin Gallery devoted a solo booth to Genesis Belanger, whose desaturated porcelain and stoneware sculptures and tableaux evoke nostalgia. Arriving at a pivotal moment, with collective anxiety about artificial intelligence running high and technology dependence at its zenith, the work feels like a longing: for analog life, for a simpler, slower world. W-Galeria took home the Focus Stand Prize with works by Seba Calfuqueo, a trans woman from the Mapuche community in Chile, whose practice explores clay in all its forms. Luminously glazed figurines, jewels, and tiles appeared alongside works that weave synthetic hair with clay, personal, culturally rooted, and feeling almost sacred. Marc Selwyn and Ortuzar joined forces to present a solo booth of figurative sculptures by Akinsanya Kambon, whose work moves fluidly between Pan-African spiritual traditions and histories of Black renaissance, fired through Japanese raku techniques that introduce an element of spontaneity into every piece. The forms embrace chance within ceremony, inspired by African deities, ancestral spirits, and historical figures, and feel as much like ritual objects as works of art.

Here are seven notable galleries highlighting ceramics at this year's Frieze New York.