Canvases that curve. Peaches with mouths. Bottle caps as eyes. Arms that are snakes. Mankind’s first garden seems to be the setting for a number of the mixed-media pieces in this show of new works by Miguel Ángel Payano Jr. But it’s a postmodern place, touched with weirdness. Payano lives between New York and Beijing, and his heritage is Afro-Caribbean. Multilingual, he’s interested in language, in the ways we connect through words—or fail to connect. Payano’s peaches, which we’re told suggest “single celled humans,” have soft checks and sometimes an eye within their mouth. It’s all very eerie, a sort of mashup between the surrealism of Elsa Schiaparelli and the mysticism of Frida Kahlo. The work Autumn Corner (2026) is undeniably beautiful. —Laura Jacobs