Business Finance Media Technology Policy Wealth Insights Interviews

Art Art Fairs Art Market Art Reviews Auctions Galleries Museums Interviews

Lifestyle Nightlife & Dining Style Travel Interviews

Power Lists Nightlife & Dining Art A.I. PR

About About Observer Advertise With Us Reprints

NADA New York Opens With Fewer Early Sales But Plenty of Potential

Missing was the sense of urgency that once fueled sell-out previews, but participating dealers are optimistic that compelling presentations paired with accessible pricing will bring fair-hopping buyers back around.

With Frieze New York opening just a few blocks away, Future Fair close by and the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in the same building, NADA opened in good company. At 10 a.m. on May 13, it welcomed VIP guests, still fresh with early-day curiosity, to take a quick first look before what would be, for most, a long day of fair hopping. But as a group of primarily made up of New Yorkers and American collectors roamed the aisles, there was not the clear sense of urgency that once animated NADA’s fast sold-out previews. Maybe it was the simple fact that there are more than six fairs overlapping, though it might have to do with the fact that despite NADA’S international profile and a strong presence from the Americas, there were just a few gems from Asia and very few exhibitors from Europe.

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

Still, across the 110 exhibitors presenting this year—more than half participating for the first time—there were plenty of opportunities to discover emerging talent and rising galleries. By the evening of the preview day, some of the most interesting presentations had led to sales and several holds, particularly among dealers who’d brought curated solo or duo presentations and set prices strategically under $10,000 or even in the $2,000-5,000 range.

Feia Studio, for example, sold out its solo booth by São Paulo-born, New York-based artist Marianna Peragallo. Based in L.A., Feia—”ugly” in Portuguese—is run by Thomas Martinez Pilnik and Jake Cavallo, whose eccentric proposition celebrates failure through art that embraces curiosity, intrigue, novelty, beauty, disgust and everything in between. This is certainly the case with Peragallo’s eerily paradoxical yet whimsically playful surreal assemblages, which transform familiar objects and characters from the everyday vernacular into pocket parks of possible harmony amid urban chaos. Using the relics of daily city life and drawing attention to their overlooked symbolic value, she reactivates and reimagines them, giving them new life as cartoonish characters animated by humor, grief, queerness and resilience. Prices range from $1,600 to $3,000. “Almost all the works are staying with New York City collectors, which feels like a strong indicator that people are connecting with fairs in their own towns, and using the opportunity to explore the market and get introduced to new artists,” Martinez Pilnik told Observer, emphasizing how exceptionally validating this was for a new gallery championing emerging and often under-shown artists.

Tribeca gallery LATITUDE also sold 90 percent of its booth within the first two to three hours of the fair, presenting a solo booth of paintings by young Chinese artist Shangfeng Zhang. Exploring the intersection of contemporary life and the lingering emotional impact of mythology, Zhang brings mythic resonance into intimate moments of everyday life through a sequence of subdued interiors and inward-looking figures suspended in their environments. The psychologically charged atmospheres point to a rich inner world where imagination moves beyond the physical to find tropes and archetypes within recurring social patterns and roles. All works were priced under $3,000.

Also from L.A. but with strong ties to China and broader Asia, Yiwei Gallery had multiple red dots within the fair’s first hours around the similarly fantastical, fairytale-like paintings of Kay Seohyung Lee, selling eight of them by the evening at prices ranging from $950 to $3,500. Rendered in luminous blue and emerald tones, Lee’s works unfold as meticulous micro-worlds of storytelling, populated almost entirely by female characters who seem extracted from different layers of history: princesses, dames and other archetypal figures caught between fantasy, hierarchy and social performance. Lee transforms the language of historical painting and fairy-tale pageantry into a sharper meditation on visibility, exclusion and the fragile architectures of individual and collective identity. Born in Seoul and based in Philadelphia, the artist grew up near U.S. military bases........

© Observer