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Artist and Dealer Jaqueline Cedar’s SPLIT LEVEL Fair Bets on a More Intimate Art Market Model

The booth-free fair returns to Rimadesio’s NoMad showroom on October 1 with 16 exhibitors and a model built around shared space, lower costs and longer conversations.

The launch of a new art fair always invites the same question: do we really need another? Yet even as there are real concerns about sustainability in an ever-more-crowded fair calendar, it’s refreshing to see new art fairs emerge specifically to test models that are a direct response to some of the biggest challenges galleries, and the broader market, face today. SPLIT LEVEL Fair, which returns for its second edition October 1-3, is one such fair. With its community-driven format, it is part of a growing group of salon-style, booth-free “dealer to dealer” fairs that offer the visibility and engagement of a conventional art fair while allowing participating galleries, and the host venue, to share resources.

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Hosted at Rimadesio’s two-level NoMad flagship showroom, SPLIT LEVEL takes a playful approach to installation within the design-centered space, turning it into a community hub where art is displayed alongside an expansive program of performances, talks and activations. The fair’s founder, artist and dealer Jaqueline Cedar, intentionally avoided one of New York’s already saturated art weeks with the goal of encouraging slow looking and deeper engagement.

Cedar moved into gallery work as an extension of her own practice, launching the artist-run Good Naked, a nomadic independent gallery whose ethos and model reflect not only the adaptability of the SPLIT LEVEL format but also the very conditions from which it emerged. “I could have easily operated in a more experimental way without selling work,” she........

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