Exhibitions

  • Elizabeth Downer Riker – Exhibition 2026

    Elizabeth Downer Riker

    The Understory

    September 8 – October 3, 2026

    Opening reception:  Thursday, September 10, 2026 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

    Ceres Gallery is pleased to present THE UNDERSTORY, a solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Elizabeth Downer Riker.

    The Understory features large oil paintings that blend personal narratives with fantastical elements, as well as smaller realistic works painted on ragged-edge linen portraying historical events, and sculptures that draw on everyday tools that women use around the world. Depicting both realistic and surreal images of women in nature, Downer Riker challenges us to contemplate how violence affects our families, our society and our planet through the accelerating exploitation of both people and the Earth. 

    Downer Riker focuses on the way in which women have protected and defended nature over the centuries, putting their bodies on the line at great risk. “In both Western and non-Western cultures, nature was traditionally seen as feminine and as a living organism,” Downer Riker said. “In our modern consumer society, nature is viewed as something to be dominated and used for its parts. This mentality has led to the climate emergency we are now experiencing. Today, in communities around the world, women continue to defend the rivers, the forests and the land, and are met with brutality and persecution.” With The Understory, Downer Riker hopes to spark a broader conversation about this crisis.

    About Elizabeth Downer Riker

    The artist, born in Boston and raised in Paris, started out as a filmmaker, earning her MFA at NYU’s graduate film program. After discovering her love for painting, she studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan. For many years she lived in Oaxaca, Mexico where she painted people working the land. On her return to New York in 2011, she began a series of paintings of rooftop farms and community gardens to celebrate the greening of cities. Downer Riker has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. She is an artist member of the Salmagundi Club.
    elizabethdownerriker.com

    Elizabeth Downer Riker is an American realist painter and surrealist sculptor who lived in Oaxaca, Mexico for many years. Her work focuses on climate change and ecofeminism. She has had several solo exhibits in Chelsea which were mentioned in The New York Times. Downer Riker studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan. She participates in several annual group shows, and is currently represented by Ceres Gallery. She is an Artist Member of the Salmagundi Club. Her paintings are in private collections and have been exhibited in the United States, France, Switzerland and Mexico.

    Focusing on the resilience of women and nature, and the ongoing violence they endure, Downer Riker uses paintings and sculpture to examine the deep connections that enable them to heal and resist.

    Click here to view more of Elizabeth Downer Riker’s work

  • Jane Seavers – Exhibition 2026

    Jane Seavers

    Visions of a World on Fire

    September 8 – October 3, 2026

    An opening reception: Thursday, September 10, 2026 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m
    A closing reception will also be held on Saturday, October 3, 2026 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.

    NEW YORK, NY — Ceres Gallery is pleased to present Visions of a World on Fire, a compelling new solo exhibition by oil painter, Jane Seavers, running from September 8 to October 3, 2026. Following her 2023 exhibition, Refuge and Peril in the Borderlands, Seavers shifts her focus to a landscape transformed by wildfire, smoke, and environmental change.  Working in a style that blends realism and abstraction, she explores the visceral tension between beauty and danger, inviting viewers to contemplate humanity’s relationship with a natural world increasingly at risk.

    For Seavers, these landscapes are not distant observations, but lived realities.  Her perspective is informed by her personal experience with repeated evacuation of her home, as well as her close ties to the firefighting community–including  her son, a firefighter/paramedic, and her neighbor, an elite wildland “Hotshot” firefighter.  Through luminous color and dramatic atmosphere, the exhibition offers a tribute to both the majesty of the land and the resilience of those who protect it. 

    “I want my work to serve as a witness to the fragility of our environment and the bravery of those who fight to protect our essential and natural world”, says Seavers.  “I want to balance the aesthetic beauty of the landscape with the urgent, often painful realities of its degradation.”

    Jane Seavers lives and works in Southwestern New Mexico, where she has painted the landscapes of the borderlands and Southwest for nearly two decades.  Raised on a multi-generational farm in Wisconsin, she came to painting after a career as a nurse-midwife and nurse practitioner serving communities in California, Alaska, Guatemala, and New Mexico.  This background, rooted in a life of service, informs  lifelong interest in the intersection between people and place.

    Seavers work may be found in private collections throughout New Mexico, Colorado, New York, and California and is represented by Ceres Gallery in New York City.

    Click Here To View More of the Work of Jane Seavers

  • Ceres Gallery Friends Expo 2026

    Friends Expo • A Ceres Gallery Exhibition

    Ceres Gallery annually offers an Exhibition for ARTIST FRIENDS to exhibit their artwork for one month in the 2,000+ square foot premier gallery space in the heart of the Chelsea art district in New York City. Sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, collage, mixed-media and photography are on display.

    ARTIST FRIENDS of all genders are invited to present one wall-based artwork or sculpture within a collectively realized exhibition running for four weeks. The exhibition is non-juried, reflecting Ceres’ ongoing commitment to fostering an inclusive and generative environment for artistic exchange.

    List of Ceres Friends and their websites

    Nina Africano

    Alberte Bernier

    Philippe Boirin  

    Deborah Eck

    Jacqueline Firmo Falconi

    Luis Fonseca

    Cindy Franz

    Susan Garland

    Jessica Gondek

    Sung Gross

    Pradeep Gupta

    Miho Hiranouchi

    Jan Hoogenboom

    Daniela Markovic

    Julie May 

    Connie McKinnon

    Jessica Mieles 

    Esther Mizrahi 

    Sylvia Mohn

    Marjorie Morrow

    Helen Sprinkle

    Mary Alice Orito

    Suyapa Quinn

    Mary McKenna Ridge

    Laura-Lee Smith 

    Phylicia Eileen Tierney

    Joel Tretin

    Lois Uttley

    Michael Weinert

    Emma Zachurski

    Exhibition Dates: July 21 – August 15, 2026

    Opening Reception: Thursday July 25, 2026, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

    Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM

    Location: 547 West 27th St, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001

  • Raising Women’s Voices

    Ceres Gallery Annual Member Exhibition

    Raising Women’s Voices is the premier annual exhibition at Ceres Gallery and a cornerstone of our mission to champion the collective power of women artists. We see this showcase as a vital act of cultural preservation, ensuring that women’s perspectives remain central to the contemporary art dialogue.

    This annual exhibition continues to draw from a sophisticated community of artists across the United States and abroad, highlighting an extraordinary range of artistic mastery and conceptual depth that spans traditional oil painting, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking alongside experimental digital installations, photography, and mixed-media textiles. 

    Thematically, the collection is as diverse as the artists themselves, moving beyond a single aesthetic to explore urgent, multifaceted viewpoints including socio-political activism that challenges existing power structures, artistic responses to environmental justice and the climate crisis, and deep investigations into personal identity and the hidden histories of women. By weaving together these varied topics, the exhibit creates a powerful, multifaceted narrative that honors the complexity of the female experience in the twenty-first century.

    Read the exhibit’s digital catalog on Bloomberg Connects here.

    Click on the image below to go to the Ceres Gallery Bloomberg Exhibition page, where you can browse details of the featured artworks and read personal artist statements to gain insights into the artists’ creative processes through their own words. You can also listen to short audio profiles with segments on the backgrounds and inspirations of our participating artists.

    Exhibition Dates: June 23 – July 18, 2026

    Opening Reception: June 25, 2026, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

    Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM

    Location: 547 West 27th St, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001

  • Liz Ndoye & Jo-Ann Brody-Exhibition

    Liz Ndoye & Jo-Ann Brody-Exhibition

    May 26 – June 20, 2026

    Solo/Duo 3 – Culture and Stance

    Reception:
    Thursday, May 28, 6-8PM

    Ceres Gallery presents Solo/Duo 3 – Culture and Stance, the third collaboration between sculptor Jo‑Ann Brody and mixed media/fiber artist Liz Ndoye. Both artists work figuratively, each bringing a distinct yet complementary approach: Brody explores stance and gesture, while Ndoye creates a fictional cultural world through her dolls.

    Liz Ndoye. Trauma-Doll-I. Uniball-Pen – 12X8 inches

    Liz Ndoye continues her love affair with her doll “creatures” – soft, fabric, humanoid figures that she makes and installs in tandem with her large canvases and drawings in order to depict aspects of their doll culture and existence. In this, her latest show at Ceres, she will attempt to convey and share her passion for and joyous communion with her doll creations. She will make dolls, paint and draw them, and create installations that celebrate their healing, happy qualities.

    View More of the work of Liz Ndoye here.

    Jo-Ann Brody Papier mache, mulberry papers, glue, varnish
    9 x 6 x 9 inched, 6 panels

    Brody’s sculptures rely on minimal cues that evoke the human figure, women, through distortion, elongation and exaggeration. Heads are mere punctuation. Working entirely in papier‑mâché with powdered pulp and colored mulberry paper, she creates expressive forms that read as lines in space. This exhibition also marks her return to the book form with two new works, Eyes and Dog Walk Mornings.

    View More of the work of Jo-Ann Brody here.

  • Marilyn Banner-Exhibition

    April 28 – May 23, 2026

    THROUGHLINES 

    Reception:
    Thursday, April 30, 6-8pm

    Double Vision, Graphite, conte, charcoal on white kraft paper, 24 x 18″, 2026

    Double Vision, Graphite, conte, charcoal on white kraft paper, 24 x 19″, 2026
    Marilyn Banner’s recent drawings suggest and further develop the throughlines found in her earlier work: darkness, body, nature, guardians, and spirit. Strong and energetic drawings suggest monstrous animal-like creatures, red eyes staring out, protecting the surrounding space. Quieter drawings of African masks, statues, and branches suggest ritual, and secret connections. 
    
    Though the work suggests ancient myth and distant memory, it is contemporary in Banner’s mind. The times are turbulent; there is strong feeling in and around us. Like the angry goddesses of myth and legend, we today are challenged to hold our ground, protect the good and ward off what is evil.

    View additional work by Marilyn Banner here.

  • Mary Alice Orito-Exhibition

    April 28 – May 23, 2026

    bits-n-pieces  

    Reception:
    Thursday, April 30, 6-8pm

    Torn paper and string. 9 1/2″ x 11 1/2″

    Mary Alice Orito’s art and design practice includes mixed media, collage and a background of clothing and costume design in NYC’s garment industry, music videos, and TV costume design. She is a graduate of Parsons School of Design and New York University School of Social Work. Parallel to her art practice of over 20 years, she had a decades old private psychotherapy practice.

    Aware of the waste in all our lives, Orito began saving the cut black construction paper she used in the last few years. This exhibition ‘bits-n-pieces’ at Ceres Gallery focuses on the cut pieces of prior exhibitions.  

    View additional work by Mary Alice Orito here.

  • Tania Kravath-Exhibition

    April 28 – May 23, 2026

    Tending Hope  

    Reception:
    Thursday, April 30, 5-8pm

    Travelers, Paint/ mixed media on paper

    Tania Kravath’s work is tied to social and political narratives and she has a keen awareness of the fragility of this moment in time.Throughout the many chapters in her art making, Kravath returns to the female form and the theme of women as vessels of knowledge and nurturers of seeds.

    Recent collages and paper sculptures honor our ancestors’ perseverance, the grief experienced from inevitable change and loss, and the emotional connections that nurture, sustain and cultivate hope.

    View additional work by Tania Kravath here.

  • Susan Grabel-Exhibition

    March 31 – April 25, 2026

    Lost My Husband / Can’t Lose My Country 

    Receptions:
    Thursday, April 2, 6-8pm
    Saturday, April 4, 3-5pm
    Saturday, April 25, 3-5pm

    Sanctuary Portrait #24,  cast paper, molded cardboard, and mixed media installation

    Following the death of her husband of fifty-four years, George Rappaport, in May 2024, the artist’s work has undergone a profound transformation. The cast paper and molded cardboard portraits first shown in her exhibition, Reflections, have evolved into meditations on loss and grief. Faces hide,fragment, protrude, or recede, reflecting the disorientation and instability inherent in mourning.

    This personal reckoning is intertwined with the artist’s anger and anguish over what she sees as the ongoing assault on the nation—its institutions and its Constitution—by the current administration. Using Photoshop collages, flyers, and images drawn from public resistance and protest, she constructs visual backdrops that mirror a broader collective unrest. These layered environments situate private loss within a larger landscape of national fracture, where individual grief and public disquiet converge.

    Susan Grabel grew up in Brooklyn, NY and is currently based on Staten Island. Grabel completed her studies at Brooklyn College and the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1963 and 1964.. Her debut solo show occurred in 1969 at Pace College Gallery in New York City. Since the 1970s, Grabel has been involved with fusing both feminist and social issues into her sculpted forms. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s she was active in the Soho figurative co-op gallery movement. She has exhibited her work at galleries and museums across the country and currently shows at Ceres Gallery. Her work is included in many museum and private collections.

    View additional work by Susan Grabel here.

  • Melanie Hickerson-Exhibition

    March 31 – April 25, 2026

    Miracles

    Receptions: 
    Thursday, April 2, 6-8pm

    Saturday, April 4, 3-5pm

    Let’s Go Back Attack, acrylic on linen with squiggles, 16×20″

    Melanie Hickerson is a painter whose work blends narrative, metaphor, and lived experience into richly colored, disciplined compositions. She earned her MFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 1985 and has exhibited extensively in New York and Texas, including long-time exhibitions at Ceres Gallery. Her recent series, Ribbon of Life and Homage to Miracles, explores ecological loss and interconnectedness through dream-like, surreal imagery. Hickerson’s work is held in the permanent collections of the University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas Lutheran University in Seguin. She lives and works in Austin, Texas.

    View additional work by Melanie Hickerson here.