Jeff Koons’s Hulk sculptures dominated Gagosian’s booth. © Jeff Koons, Incredible Hulk ™, and © Marvel. All rights reserved. Photo: Maris Hutchinson Courtesy Gagosian

Frieze officially took flight yesterday (May 7) with its VIP preview, kicking off a jam-packed art week in New York, where no fewer than nine fairs are unfolding ahead of the marquee May evening auctions. The fair opened just days after news broke of its acquisition by Endeavor’s former CEO Ari Emanuel, in a deal reportedly worth $200 million, and in the midst of turbulence stirred by an erratic 100-day-old presidency, where trade wars and cultural grandstanding have become the new normal. Still, early sales suggest a market that’s holding steady—albeit one that’s more cautious, more curated and leagues away from the sold-out-at-entry frenzy of years past. As the aisles rapidly filled in the fair’s first hours, most works were still available, with dealers far more open to quiet negotiations, even for formerly too-hot-to-touch names. With Asian collectors largely absent and a notable number of Europeans skipping New York altogether, it was American buyers who showed up, browsed and—crucially—bought, perhaps sensing that now is the moment to make their move.

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Held once again at The Shed in the heart of Chelsea’s gallery grid, Frieze New York has positioned itself more like a boutique fair than the sprawling showcases staged in its international iterations. This year’s edition features sixty-five exhibitors from twenty-five countries, though several New York mainstays—assumedly wary of economic crosswinds—opted instead for Independent, TEFAF or bypassed the fairs entirely to focus on in-house programming. “We’re just a few blocks from the fairs, and we decided to focus on our exhibitions; it’s been working. People are stopping by on their way,” Eric Gleason of Kasmin told Observer. On preview day, the gallery opened a solo show of ethereal, mystical works by L.A.-based painter Theodora Allen, and nearly half were already placed by that evening.

The mega galleries that did show up largely opted for single-artist spotlights or tightly curated presentations. At Pace, Adam Pendleton took center stage in a thoughtful pairing with works by Lynda Benglis, highlighting parallels in their layered explorations of materiality and process. The strategy paid off: at the day’s end, the gallery had sold multiple Benglis pieces in the $275,000-300,000 range, while six of Pendleton’s paintings were placed within the first few hours, priced between $165,000 and $425,000. The presentation dovetailed with Pendleton’s solo exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and followed the high-profile announcement that MoMA had acquired all thirty-five works from his 2021-2022 survey.

Meanwhile, Gagosian seemed intent on flexing its muscles this season, perhaps to reassure collectors of its continued dominance. Fresh off celebrating Larry’s eightieth birthday, the gallery opened not one but two museum-grade shows: “Willem de Kooning” in Chelsea and the Paloma Picasso–curated “Picasso: Tête-à-tête” exhibition uptown—while anchoring its Frieze booth with a bombastic display of Jeff Koons’s Hulk Elvis sculptures. The three inflatable-looking polychrome steel sculptures, set against a fleshy immersive vinyl backdrop, brought full Koonsian crowd-catching Pop playfulness. That day, the gallery reported selling one piece for an undisclosed price—though auction precedent suggests it landed most likely around $3 million, as a six-foot Hulk (Friends) fetched $3.4 million at Phillips New York in 2019. “The fair is off to a great start, and the response to our booth has been phenomenal,” senior director Millicent Wilner told the press, noting strong interest in the remaining two sculptures. The presentation could signal a homecoming for Koons, who left both Gagosian and David Zwirner for Pace in 2021—only to appear now back in Larry’s court.

Nearby, David Zwirner also took a focused approach, devoting the entire booth to a postmodern wink at early twentieth-century iconography through the lens of Pictures Generation pioneer Sherrie Levine. The presentation included the debut of her 2024 series After Piet Mondrian Inverted, a characteristically sly reversal of modernist canon, with prices ranging from $150,000 to $200,000.

Hauser & Wirth, never one to play it small, reported confident early sales—including a $1.2 million monumental work by Rashid Johnson, strategically placed at the booth’s entrance as Johnson is currently the subject of a significant career survey at the Guggenheim, which opened just a few weeks ago. By afternoon, the gallery had reportedly placed more than twenty-five works, with prices ranging from $20,000 to $1.2 million. Additional sales included works by other artists with strong institutional momentum—Jack Whitten, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Mary Heilmann, Roni Horn and Thomas J Price, among others. “The crowd and conversations today have been incredibly upbeat,” Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot told the press. “Perhaps most significantly, the energy this first day at the fair has been amazingly optimistic—we’re seeing an even more robust commitment now on the part of collectors, curators and institutions to the story of art in this........

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