It’s been 100 years since the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, the glittering 1925 showcase that crystallized Art Deco as a global movement. Though the style appeared earlier, it was this exhibition that gave it coherence and momentum. Emerging from the wreckage of World War I, Art Deco offered something radically new: sharp geometry, sleek symmetry, and a vision of modern luxury. Gone was the heavy ornamentation of the 19th century; in its place came elegance, speed, and shine. It was an attitude that transformed architecture, fashion, and design, defining the look of the era.
This centennial year brings a wave of tributes across some of the world’s most stylish capitals. Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs presents “1925–2025: One Hundred Years of Art Deco” which is open through April 2026. Louis Vuitton has also revisited its storied role in the movement with an immersive exhibition (on through 2026) of more than 300 heritage objects at its space LV Dream. In the U.S., the Sarasota Art Museum presents “Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration,” while Miami’s Art Deco Museum joins Mumbai’s Bhau Daji Lad Museum as part of “Art Deco Alive!”—a twin-city celebration of some of the most beautifully preserved Deco architecture in the world.
Together, these exhibitions reaffirm Art Deco’s enduring legacy as a language of glamour and innovation. In the same spirit, we’re spotlighting 11 contemporary artists who are channelling the style’s geometric rigor, bold contrasts, and stylized elegance—carrying its spirit forward into the 21st century.
B. 1974, Washington, North Carolina. Lives and works in New York City.
With over two decades of practice and strong institutional recognition, Jim Gaylord has held multiple solo exhibitions across the United States, including at New York’s Deanna Evans Projects, the University of Pennsylvania, and most recently at Sperone Westwater in New York, his representing gallery.
The latter exhibition, “Chiaroscuro,” featured Gaylord’s signature meticulous paper cutouts which balance ancient symbolism with futuristic design, echoing Art Deco’s fascination with history and progress. Using X-Acto knives and glue, he builds layered abstractions with architectural precision. “I want them to possess a kind of structural integrity and occupy space in a convincing way,” Gaylord explained in an email to Artsy. In works like Excellent Crest (2024) and Fortunate Orbit (2025), stacked planes of paper create a sense of both organic movement and engineered order, channelling timeless motifs—an eye, a flame, a snake—that evoke both ancient iconography and contemporary branding.
Gaylord recognizes how ornament frequently draws from the natural world. “Symmetry, fractals, pattern, and repetition reveal a sense of order and logic in plants, animals and minerals,” he noted. Like Art Deco designers who stylized feathers, waves, and sunbursts into geometric decoration, he translates organic rhythms into abstraction in his work. Inspired by structures like New York’s General Electric Building, which was built in 1931, his cutouts incorporate decoration and architecture, history and speculation. While delicate paper remains central to his practice, Gaylord is now experimenting with 3D scanning, seen in recent works such as Orb (2025), as a way to expand his aesthetic into stone, metal, or resin.
Gaylord’s works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
B. 1972, Mexico City. Lives and works in Mexico City.
Edgar Orlaineta has exhibited his playful hybrid sculptures across the Americas, Europe, and Dubai—from his 2024 solo exhibitions “Modern Mystic” at Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City to “What We See of Things is the Things” at Carbon 12 in Dubai. The artist, who professes a deep love for design and its history, approaches Art Deco with both admiration and critique. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Edward Wadsworth, Gerrit Rietveld, and Pierre Legrain, he uses techniques from mass production as well as handcraft to explore the tension between the industrial and the handmade
In Miss Expanding Universe (2022)—an ode to designer Isamu Noguchi and his ballerina muse Ruth Page—Orlaineta’s use of brass, glass, walnut, quartzite, and steel evokes Deco’s material luxury, curved lines, and polished surfaces. “I think of geometry as a grid that lets images, texts, and ideas hang together,” he told Artsy in an interview. Color, minimal yet deliberate, becomes a “focal point rather than decoration.” He structured his early works using symmetry, like Totem (After Ettore Sottsass) (2008)—a tribute to the Italian designer whose Memphis movement blended Art Deco elegance with Pop art playfulness.
By contrast, Wonderwall (2020) combines locally-sourced recycled woods rooted in Mexican craft traditions—such as bocote, chicozapote, purpleheart, and cedar—and imported species like walnut and beech, juxtaposing Central American craftsmanship with European modernist materials. “By combining mass-produced items with crafted elements and natural materials, I try to create sculptures that reflect modernism’s formal clarity while exposing its contradictions,” he said. Orlaineta is currently preparing for his upcoming exhibition “The Pataphysic Craftsman” at Swivel Gallery which opens November 13.
B. 1980, Evanston, Illinois. Lives and works in Twentynine Palms, California.
Known for both intimate works on paper and ambitious public projects, Edie Fake has created large-scale murals in Los Angeles and Chicago. Represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and Broadway Gallery in New York, he has held commercial and institutional solo exhibitions at major venues such as the Berkeley Art Museum and The Drawing Center in New York. Inspired by the visual language of Art Deco, he reimagines the movement’s ornamental precision as a framework for emotion and transformation. “I love working with symmetry and am always drawn to it,” he explained, “but my instinct is often to interrupt pure symmetries—to make things symmetrical up to a point and then throw something different into the composition.” This tension animates his screenprint The Processing Department (2017), where mirrored axes, rhythmic linework, and layered ornament recall Deco’s structural harmony, though subtly unsettled through color and line breaks.
Inspired by Chicago’s Motor Club Building, built in 1929, Fake transforms Deco’s elegance into a meditation on resilience, adaptation, and emotional space. “Art Deco’s ‘modernity’ is now tethered to history and the winding paths of building use….while it’s incredible to see a building in a preserved state, it’s also wonderful to see it get woven into a patchwork of style,” he told Artsy.
B. 1985, Seoul. Lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Emerging San Francisco–based painter Ji Young Yoon transforms cityscapes into dreamy abstract paintings of illumination, shadow, and geometry. Her admiration for Art Deco is both personal and aesthetic. She recalls being captivated by her hometown’s 140 New Montgomery building—a landmark West Coast Deco skyscraper celebrated for its setbacks and dramatic shadow play. In particular, she noticed its step-like forms and vertical rhythm, qualities that continue to shape her own compositions. “I simplify urban landscapes into geometric shapes in relation to the light source that creates shadows and reflections, and I dress them with vibrant colors,” she explained in an email to Artsy.
In her ongoing series “Illuminated Geometrics,” currently exhibited online as part of the group show “Common Ground” with PXP Contemporary, Yoon channels the crisp clarity of architecture into radiant paintings that extend Deco’s legacy of symmetry and stylized modernity. By distilling buildings into sharp geometries animated by glow and reflection, she echoes Deco’s celebration of proportion and ornament while reimagining it for a contemporary world—continuing the tradition of transforming the modern city into luminous design.
B. 1982, Providence, Rhode Island. Lives and works in Los Angeles.
Abstract painter Lily Stockman first encountered Art Deco while living in Jaipur, India, studying traditional pigments and painting—an experience which informed her grasp of light and color. Traveling through the Thar Desert, she was struck by the faded havelis (multi-story townhouses or mansions) of the Mandawa region, 1940s and ’50s trading houses that fused local craft with continental design. “Mandawa is filled with crumbling Art Deco havelis untouched since they were abandoned,” she said, “but the crown jewel of Indo Deco design is Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur.” Later, Los Angeles’s old Art Deco cinemas added to her sense of geometry, symmetry, and rhythm. Though her palette and brushwork have since loosened, Stockman still sees those structures as the “fundamental scaffolding” of her compositions—serene planes of color poised between discipline and sensuality.
In her recent solo show “Book of Hours” at Charles Moffett, her fourth with the gallery, Stockman explored big questions on space and time through meditative, richly colored abstractions inspired by devotional manuscripts. A highlight, Athenian Spring (2025), an oil on linen work measuring 62-by-50 inches, combines geometric abstraction with a depiction of a flower in bloom. It comprises a central biomorphic form gently pulsing against a radiant mint-green background.
In addition to Charles Moffett, Stockman has exhibited with Gagosian, Almine Rech, and MASSIMODECARLO, her representing gallery. In spring 2026, she will present her second solo exhibition at the latter gallery, this time in its Hong Kong location.
B. 1987, Yamaguchi, Japan. Lives and works in Yamaguchi, Japan.
Masaaki Yonemoto’s radiant sculptures, recently exhibited at the Armory Show 2025 by his representing gallery, A Lighthouse Called Kanata, echo Art Deco’s skyscraper dreams: towers of geometry and brilliance that once symbolized the future of modern cities. “The image of New York’s skyscrapers, a symbol of Art Deco, was deeply etched in my mind as a boyhood dream of a futuristic city,” he explained in an email to Artsy. His long-running “Skyscraper” series embodies that memory, channelling Deco’s fascination with vertical lines, symmetry, and modern materials through his own Zen-inflected minimalism.
Working with glass and mirrors, Yonemoto creates glinting aquamarine objects that twist and shimmer. He draws inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright, whose organic architecture sought harmony with nature, and René Lalique, whose jewelry and glass works embodied Art Deco’s elegance. While still emerging on the art scene, Yonemoto has already been recognized for his mastery of glass, graduating top of his class in Glass Sculpture at Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts, where he received the school’s Headmaster Award.
For Yonemoto, craftsmanship is inseparable from vision: “Light brutally exposes minute irregularities…so it is essential to use the finest techniques and to never forget awe for nature and materials.” By stripping away excess to reveal his materials’ essence, his sculptures become meditations on illumination and form—offering a serene counterpoint to our contemporary technological excess while continuing Art Deco’s legacy of innovation and timeless beauty.
B. 1966, Augusta, Georgia. Lives in Queens and works in Brooklyn.
From Harlem to Penn Station, Rico Gatson, who is represented by Miles McEnery Gallery, has brought his language of radiant color and geometry into galleries, museums, and public spaces. For the last 30 years, the New York–based artist has channeled memory, transcendence, and identity into works that are visually striking and historically grounded. At the Studio Museum in Harlem, his exhibition “Icons 2007–2017” honored Black cultural and political figures, surrounding their portraits with rays of vivid, contrasting color that suggested both halos and explosive energy fields.
“Geometry in my work is a symbolic language—circles, triangles, fractals, and mathematical patterns carry memory, connecting history, spirituality, politics, and identity,” Gatson told Artsy. For example, in Harriet #4 (2017) he collages a photo of the abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s portrait with painted radiating stripes that echo both sacred auras and Art Deco’s sunburst motifs. Similarly, Untitled (Megastar) (2025) translates that celestial energy into pure abstraction, its concentric rays recalling Deco’s fascination with light, symmetry, and spirit. Gatson cites pioneering dancer Josephine Baker’s cosmopolitan vitality and the Chrysler Building as 1920s inspirations for his blurring of the boundaries between art, architecture, and performance.
B. 1979, Puerto Rico. Lives and works in New York City.
Installation image of Glendalys Medina, Cohoba ritual , 2022–23 at El Museo del Barrio. Photo by On White Wall. Courtesy of the Artist, New York.
“Geometry is my entry point into reality,” Glendalys Medina explained in an email to Artsy. What might appear ornamental, Medina adds, is “not decorating; I’m declaring,” positioning pattern as a statement of presence and heritage in mixed-media works.
A Nuyorican (someone with Puerto Rican heritage who lives in New York) artist, Medina often combines nails, wire, thread, and paint to construct textured, lyrical compositions that merge drawing, sculpture, and painting. Medina is currently developing major projects—including commissions for the Bronx Museum’s exhibition “We Are Family” (forthcoming in 2026) and a public artwork for Walter Gladwin Park (opening 2028). In these works, Medina combines imagery from Antillean Taíno culture, hip-hop cadence, and diasporic archives to explore how cultural identity is represented and preserved.
In Atabey (2022–23), a major commission for El Museo del Barrio, the artist formed a radiant image out of gold-hammered nails and thread, drawing on petroglyphs from a ceremonial site in Puerto Rico. The circular embellishment crowning the figure echoes hip-hop aesthetics, recalling the form of stylized boombox speakers. The radiant gold evokes the Taíno reverence for guanín (a sacred metal associated with divine energy), while also recalling Art Deco’s metallic opulence and geometric precision.
B. 1989, Sweden. Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Sofia Pashaei’s meticulously composed figures recall the portraits of Tamara de Lempicka, the Polish-born painter whose sleek, stylized depictions of women epitomized Art Deco glamour and modern femininity in the early 20th century. Yet Pashaei transforms that elegance into a meditation on memory and migration. Her subjects emerge from a lived exchange between cultures, reflecting both restraint and opulence. “Growing up in Sweden gave me a sense of restraint and balance, while my Iranian heritage, especially Qajar portraiture, introduced me to flatness, stylized figures, and the drama of symmetry,” she explained in an email to Artsy.
A recent work, Carried Through Us (2025), exemplifies this synthesis. In the oil-on-linen painting, the artist uses muted tones and measured geometry against a background of “Persian Blue,” a recurring hue that links her works across time with her ancestors. Where Art Deco once borrowed from Persian and Islamic design, Pashaei reclaims those motifs as inheritance—melding lineage, discipline, and emotion into a diasporic language that redefines Deco’s legacy.
An emerging painter who also works as an animation director, Pashaei has presented solo and duo exhibitions in Brussels at Ballon Rouge. She has also participated in group exhibitions in New York City, including at Hashimoto Contemporary and The Hole. She will have another solo show later this year at Rafael Pérez Hernando.
B. 1981, Lansing, Michigan. Lives and works in San Francisco.
Through sinuous forms and expressive gestures, Koak renders interior life visible, distilling figuration into fluid lines. Using a restrained color palette rooted in primary hues, the artist works across painting, drawing, and sculpture. Koak, who is represented by Perrotin (New York), Altman Siegel (San Francisco), and Union Pacific (London), cites her admiration for Erté—the Russian-born French illustrator and stage designer often called the “Father of Art Deco.” His work, which stretched from art to theater and interior design, epitomized the movement’s elegance and theatrical vitality. “Each [work] feels animated by a current of life that extends through the limbs, into the fingertips, and beyond the body, as if that vitality continues into the surrounding space,” she said in an interview.
Koak’s work nods to this poise and stylization while transforming Art Deco’s refinement into a language of vulnerability and emotional depth. In The Barricade (2024), for instance, a silhouette composed of thick, curving lines holds a child-like figure. The surrounding motifs—an undulating curtain, raindrops, a looping tornado, and a lightning bolt—form a delicate structure of protection and exposure.
Informed by philosophical theories of comic art, which she draws on in her art, Koak explores how the smallest artistic gesture can alter meaning. Aesthetic ornamentation (like vases, textiles, frames, and cityscapes) helps to meld her figures into their environments in her works. She describes her process as “simplification in service of emotional precision, movement, vulnerability, and internal turbulence.”
B. 1973, Tucson, Arizona. Lives and works in Los Angeles.
Eamon Ore-Giron’s practice fuses geometry and vivid color compositions that evoke both symmetry and rupture. “I don’t like when things are too zipped-up and perfect,” Ore-Giron said, noting that he favors arrangements that leave space for the viewer’s imagination. For example, his monumental series of paintings “Infinite Regress” (2015–present) are precise and pulsating constellations of circles, arcs and stepped forms. Executed mostly in flashe paint and mineral pigments on raw linen, these works contain oscillating and radiating shapes—often across expansive swatches of gold—turning into complex configurations that evoke cosmic, biomorphic and mythological forms.
Expanding his practice beyond painting, Ore-Giron has also developed an ongoing collaboration with Mexican artisans to produce large-scale tile mosaics, such as Talking Shit with Viracocha’s Rainbow (variation III) (2024), created with Cerámica Suro and based on a painting shown in the 2024 Whitney Biennial.
Drawing on Latin American design traditions and Indigenous artifacts such as Incan gold nose rings and Peruvian weavings, Ore-Giron sees his practice in conversation with Art Deco’s global eclecticism. “In order to forge this new Art Deco style, it was important to look back at a global past for inspiration,” he explained in an interview. His references to ancient forms echo Deco’s borrowings from Egyptian and Mayan design, yet his approach reimagines modernism through a contemporary, decolonial lens.
Represented by James Cohan Gallery, Ore-Giron has exhibited at major museum exhibitions, including the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art and The Contemporary Austin. His upcoming solo exhibition at James Cohan Gallery opens in early November.
