The first thing that comes to mind when looking at Anthony Gormley’s As Above So Below I (1986), a drawing with oil and charcoal that’s part of “Witness” at White Cube Mason’s Yard is, naturally, da Vinci. Gormley’s drawing of a human form with outstretched, angular limbs feels like an echo of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (1490). But where da Vinci’s drawing, inspired by the writing of a Roman architect, is designed to let the artist explore what he considered to be ideal human proportions, Gormley’s work is stranger, more uncanny. The figures in As Above So Below are flipped; what seems at first glance to be a face appears not just at the top of the image, but in the middle, where the hips and groins of these two figures are joined. One figure has its arms fully extended, while the other is angular. There’s nothing ideal about this overlaying of bodies, and at times, it barely even feels human.
It’s this relationship to humanity, which isn’t a complete lack, but instead a kind of gradual letting go of it, a gesture towards whatever might lie beyond our current, fleshy forms, that animates “Witness,” alongside several other recent exhibitions of sculpture in London and beyond. In one room of White Cube Mason’s Yard are a series of Gormley’s vast, lead sculptures; all apart from each other, like a group of people frozen in a moment of conflict. But more than that, none of them are looking at each other, and some seem to be further away from the memory of human forms than others. In one corner of the room is Witness II (1993), a figure sitting with its arms folded and head down, buried beneath heavy limbs; in the centre of the room is Home and the World II (1986-96), a human, or at least human-adjacent, figure standing tall, frozen in motion. But atop their neck isn’t a head but a vast structure, what looks like a letterbox, and seems to be longer than the figure itself is tall. These two, sharing space with other lead figures, seem to capture some kind of trajectory—an idea of what might become of the human form, and how difficult it would be for us to acknowledge or even simply comprehend it. Seeds II (1989/93) is a series of lead fragments that look like a pile of bullets, but the name of the piece implies something else: that this material, which is the source of life for Gormley’s structures, is also the genesis of some new, strange form that is at once human and something beyond it. The emphasis here is on the weight of it; the heavy materiality of a physical form. This feels echoed in the sculptures of Ivana Bašić, in the recent show “Temptations of Being” at Albion Jeune. In Hypostasis (2024), a blown glass, dust-covered sculpture reminiscent of the eggs and birthing pods that appear throughout science fiction (perhaps most famously in The Matrix), a race-car exhaust hose lingers inside the glass, the genesis of what feels like a living thing and almost certainly not human. It’s even tempting to draw a line from the lead of Gormley’s Seeds to the exhaust hose that lingers inside Hypostasis, these deeply artificial materials creating a new, synthetic life form that is both flesh and not.
In White Cube’s other space, in Bermondsey, another sculptural retrospective pushes against the limits of what might become of the human form. The most dynamic, surprising aspects of “Metamorphosis – A Retrospective,” a decades-spanning showing of work by Richard Hunt, are those that capture most viscerally that feeling of being in-between; something that feels both human and not, excavated from history but somehow still pointing toward an imagined future. Hero’s Head (1956), a sculpture of what, at first glance, appears to be a human head, on a stainless steel base, like something long forgotten being excavated. Here, the eponymous head is fused to the helmet, flesh and technology merging into one form. This feels echoed in Gormley’s Home and the World II, where what begins as a human form changes into something else through the intervention of something more sculpted or technological. But where Hero’s Head presents something static, like a relic, Growth Form (1957) freezes the process of transformation in time; the long, thin columns of welded steel leading up to a strange, minute figure with a face shaped like a crescent moon and short, slender limbs. The sculpture itself looms over those coming to look at it, and yet the figure at the top isn’t looking down to meet our gaze (if, indeed, it has eyes in the same way that we do). Instead, its abstract visage and outstretched limbs are looking up, beyond us and towards the heavens, as if its next form, or the next step in our evolution, might be out there waiting to be discovered.
If Gormley’s sculptures present forms that are easily recognisable as human but with the language of a different material—the 1983 piece Untitled (Sleeping Figure) lies down looking at the sky, resting the back of its head on a rock the way a softer human might use a pillow in bed, or a bundled up shirt while gazing at the summer sun—then Hunt challenges us to look at his work and find traces of a familiar humanity within it. Opposed Linear Forms (1961) looks at first like abstracted fragments of welded steel coming together with the beginning of a gesture of communication. But the longer you look at it, the more these uncertain forms look almost like human figures. The curvature of their peaks takes on the shape of a face in the same way as Growth Form, and their entangled, metallic ends look like two people holding hands. But these sculptures, with their fragmented, almost uncertain relationship to the human form must have an ending, a point at which any traces of what we can see and recognise ourselves within finally disappear. This point seems to be reached in “The Spin Off,” an exhibition of work by Rafał Zajko at Focal Point.
Rafał Zajko, Bread and Milk, 2023; at Kunsthalle Wien. Photo courtesy of Kunsthalle Wien
As the title of Zajko’s exhibition suggests, “The Spin Off” imagines the idea of what comes next, with the title drawn from the way in which things spin off from films, TV shows and other forms of art. Much of the work here takes its name from films that have been remade—including Solaris, Funny Games and A Star is Born—a sense of the past being written over like a palimpsest, not just of culture, but of humanity. It’s through this language that Zajko explores exactly what human flesh might spin off to in its next iteration. Larder II (2025) is comprised of an almost overwhelming number of materials—including bio resin, bronze, stoneware and pickles—and within its case (the front of which feels retrofuturist; cryptic and alien, something that could have been) are small spheres of material which feel similar to Gormley’s Seeds and Bašić’s Hypostasis: something that might contain the genesis of a new form, something that might have once been human. But beyond that, “The Spin Off” contains work that has explicitly left any trace of humanity behind. The small, blinking red light at the centre of A Star is Born (2025), a vast piece that consumes an entire wall of Focal Point, housed in a transparent circle at the centre of the impenetrable perimeter of concrete, seems to directly reference HAL-9000, the sinister supercomputer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, a creation famous for its desire to shed off the humans from the ship, with its monotone delivery of “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” But in the context of “The Spin Off,” Zajko’s Star is more than just a reference to Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece. Here, it’s a point on a map, a sense of what might be waiting for us countless centuries, or even millennia down the line, as we continue to evolve and transform. There’s a tactility to Zajko’s sculptures; they literally aren’t as cold and heavy as work by artists like Gormley and Hunt, and it’s this relative softness, the sense that they might be yielding if touched, that makes them feel strangely human. That they could be as soft and fragile as our flesh, some version of us if different evolutionary choices had been made.
Solaris (2025) is made of melted church candles; like the various spin-offs that lend their names to Zajko’s works in this exhibition, it takes the materiality of the past and transform it into something else. Among all this are fragments of humanity, whether in the uncanny fleshiness of the Larder series or the literal materials used in Solaris. But humanity as we understand it doesn’t exist here, although it might have done once, a long time ago. Through exhibitions like “The Spin Off,” “Metamorphosis” and “Witness,” a tension is revealed in these strange, sculptured figures, an uncertainty in their relationship to us. The more time spent looking at them, the more it seems that they might be suggesting that we, with our soft flesh, mortal coils and all too human intelligence, might not be as long for this world as we might hope, daring us to consider what comes next for us, and what might happen if the versions of ourselves that we strain to see when looking at Growth Form or Home and the World II became obsolete, frozen in time and waiting to be excavated like one of Hunt’s welded steel helmets.
Strong sales showcased TEFAF’s continued ability to attract sophisticated buyers across multiple collecting categories. Photo: Jitske Nap
The energy on opening night was palpable, according to TEFAF New York director Leanne Jagtiani. “No matter how consistent it is year after year, I’m always dazzled by the quality of work our exhibitors bring to the Armory,” she told Observer. “Walking through the booths, you could sense the enthusiasm—exhibitors clearly felt the vibrant energy of the crowd and were engaged in meaningful conversation.” Indeed, some dealers reported near-immediate sales, and others quickly found themselves in deep talks with promising collectors. And while murmurs about a champagne shortage and swapped-out tulips were read by some as signs of austerity, the fair once again affirmed its standing as the premier marketplace for the exceptional, regardless of the economic climate.
David Zwirner opened the fair with a solo presentation of elegantly suspended sculptures by Ruth Asawa, accompanied by a series of works on paper that captured her poetic and process-driven approach with quiet precision. Reflecting a deep engagement with nature, geometry and process-based making, Asawa looped wire into ethereal, biomorphic tridimensional crochet, challenging the boundaries between sculpture, craft and drawing while exploring the relationship between space and form, light and shadow. The gallery sold four sculptures priced between $320,000 and $2.8 million and six works on paper priced between $50,000 and $160,000.
That same day, Ortuzar Projects, in collaboration with Marc Selwyn Fine Art, sold Lee Bontecou’s iconic Untitled (1959) for a price reportedly in the $2 million range. The museum-quality presentation highlighted Bontecou’s visionary fusion of postwar anxiety and cosmic wonder—her signature machine-organic hybrids forged from industrial detritus. Evoking both space probes and bodily voids, Bontecou’s cratered forms exist somewhere between lunar landscapes and anatomical maps, channeling a haunting new relationship between humanity and the cosmos.
Meanwhile, Thaddaeus Ropac reported rapid sales of nearly every Daniel Richter canvas in the fair’s first few hours. Two large oil paintings—sperlingskleine WEISE (2024) and Triumph des Höhnischen—each surpassed $470,000. “It’s been an extremely busy opening, perhaps even more so than last year,” said the Austrian dealer, noting the “very positive response” to Richter’s new paintings from TEFAF’s reliably sophisticated and informed buyer base.
Standing out for both quality and curatorial strength was Robilant Voena’s booth, which included a monumental pink Andy Warhol tribute to celebrities, Myths (Multiple) (1981), in dialogue with a rare and graceful brass sculpture by Melotti, three rare Fucsia slashes and a fourth work by Lucio Fontana, along with ceramics by the Argentinian pioneer of space and matter. “We are very happy with the attendance of our clients and collectors! TEFAF has also been incremental in supporting our presence in New York, especially as we have reopened our new gallery close by,” commented Robilant Voena. “We have seen a healthy mix of American and European attendees.”
Another long-time exhibitor at TEFAF, the London- and Italy-based gallery Cardi reportedly placed several works with American collectors, including historical pieces such as Piero Manzoni’s Achrome (1962), priced above $330,000; Agostino Bonalumi’s Bianco (1989), with an asking price of $120,000; and décollages by Mimmo Rotella, each listed at $55,000. The gallery also sold two works by contemporary Italian-born, New York–based artist Davide Balliano for $35,000 each—he will have a solo exhibition at Tina Kim gallery in the coming months. “In this particular moment, I felt collectors’ response was both responsible and solid—they’ve slyly returned to the market, sensing this is a buy moment,” gallery owner Nicolo Cardi told Observer. By Monday, the gallery had also placed works by Josef Albers and Raymond Pettibon and had a Richard Serra and a Mimmo Paladino on reserve.
Tornabuoni Arte—an Italian gallery and TEFAF veteran specializing in postwar masterpieces—also reported strong sales to new buyers from the U.S. and Europe, including a metaphysical piazza by Giorgio De Chirico, an embroidery and ballpoint pen airplane work by Alighiero Boetti, a poetic piece by Claudio Parmiggiani and a work by Mimmo Rotella, while a striking white Lucio Fontana remains on hold.
Robilant + Voena’s offerings. Robilant & Voena
Some of the offerings at TEFAF also aligned intriguingly with the upcoming spring marquee auctions. As Barbara Gladstone’s personal collection heads to the block—led by Richard Prince’s iconic Nurse—the series made a parallel return across the fairs: Gana Art from Seoul presented a Masquerade Nurse from the 2000s, originally acquired from Gladstone’s collection in 2014 by a Korean collector and now offered with a $5.5 million price tag. Gladstone Gallery brought works from the dealer’s private holdings, including a suite of George Condo drawings, most of which were acquired directly from the artist and had never been seen on the market before. The gallery swiftly placed forty-five of them, with prices ranging from $15,000 to $150,000.
While TEFAF New York leans toward the modern and contemporary, it wasn’t all blue-chip masterworks. Sprüth Magers showcased a new series of bronze reliefs by Anne Imhof, translating her visceral, performance-based explorations of the body, identity and societal tension into a material language rooted in permanence. Returning to the Park Avenue Armory after her unforgettable live performance, DOOM, Imhofs Untitled (Silas) (2024) sold to a private U.S. collection for €250,000. A suite of drawings from her Cerberus series (2024), mapping the tension between human and animal, gesture and emotion, also went to a European collector.
Quite timely with the daily news, Leon Tovar was offering a large-scale, humorous Fernando Botero portrayal of a pope, El Nuncio (1987). León Tovar, owner of the gallery, expressed his excitement about the unexpected alignment, describing it as a “magical coincidence.” The curatorial concept of their booth this year was inspired by the movie Conclave and the idea of unification, with other works by Latino masters such as Rufino Tamayo and Wifredo Lam. “It is just a magical coincidence; Pope Francis dies, an American pope is elected, and here we have this impressive work by Botero, which represents precisely that link between art and spirituality,” Tovar said. The painting had an asking price in the $3 million range.
Meanwhile, as its two galleries stage museum-quality exhibitions devoted to modern and contemporary masters, Gagosian dedicated its entire TEFAF booth to a solo presentation of works by the talented young figurative painter—and Larry’s former girlfriend—Anna Weyant. By the end of opening day, the gallery had reportedly placed Spring Florals, a large-scale canvas priced at $300,000, along with eight intimately scaled new paintings priced at $90,000 each. Depicting jewelry items such as pearl bracelets, gold chains and daisy pendants rendered inside jewelry boxes with minimal detail, these trompe l’oeil works—explicitly conceived for the fair—created a tidy visual dialogue with the rest of the presentation. In the end, though, they read more as virtuosic exercises in decorative hyperrealism than meaningful critiques of consumerism, despite their conceptual pretense.
Kasmin also reported the sale of a group of works spanning a broad price range—from Yves Klein’s iconic La Victoire de Samothrace, sold for $17,500, and a gelatin silver print of his memorable performance Leap Into the Void, October 27, for $35,000, to Janaina Tschäpe’s oil stick on canvas Summer thoughts (2025), sold for $95,000. Additional placements included a pencil and charcoal on paper by Jannis Kounellis priced at $25,000, two Hugo McCloud oil paintings at $115,000 each and Mariko Mori’s crystal-like sculpture Plasma Stone II (2017-2018), sold for $325,000.
Similarly strong on the contemporary side was White Cube, which placed Tracey Emin’s visceral You please me (2022) for nearly $400,000, a group of Julie Mehretu’s etchings for $250,000 and Ed Ruscha’s acrylic on canvas Brave Men Study I (1995).
Among the standout works, Galerie Lefebvre presented a stunning Amedeo Modigliani drawing—a distilled formal study of the human head, clearly inspired by African masks and Cycladic sculpture. Originally conceived as a sketch for a lost 1911 sculpture, the work now stands as the sole surviving testament to this level of synthesis and mastery in Modigliani’s practice. During the preview, the dealer confided to Observer that, given the response at the fair confirming its rarity and power, he was seriously considering keeping it for himself. Another gem: a vibrant 1984 Jean-Michel Basquiat on a blue background at Van de Weghe’s booth, shown alongside miniature works by Alexander Calder and Henry Moore—and a floor piece by Carl Andre that fairgoers kept unwittingly stepping on, too distracted by the overall quality of the presentation to notice.
A notable presence in Salon 94’s booth was the work of Aboriginal artist Mantua Nangala, whose market and institutional presence has surged in recent years. Her intricate acrylic-on-linen dot paintings visualize the sacred landscape of Marrapinti in the Gibson Desert, translating ancestral Dreaming stories into rhythmic, almost cartographic compositions that link micro and macro worlds. Priced around $80,000 each, they offer a contemporary language for inherited knowledge—anchored in tradition but speaking fluently to today’s global art stage. The gallery also sold several works by Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye and Mitsuko Asakura in the $40,000-90,000 range.
Meanwhile, Richard Saltoun spotlighted generations of pioneering fiber artists from across geographies, with standouts including wall tapestries by Magdalena Abakanowicz—one originally featured in the seminal 1969 MoMA exhibition “Wall Hangings”—and a luminous gold piece by Olga de Amaral, timed to coincide with her evening auction debut and a major show at Fondation Cartier. Lisson Gallery, instrumental in building De Amaral’s international market, also placed her Tierra y fibra 3 (1988) alongside Sean Scully’s Wall Tappan Deep Red (2025) for $500,000, Dalton Paula’s Zacimba Gaba (2025) for $200,000 and Kelly Akashi’s Be Me (A Thousand Flowers) (2021) for $50,000, following her memorable recent show at the gallery during last Frieze Los Angeles.
TEFAF runs through May 13. Photo: Jitske Nap
Here, the demand for Impressionist masters remains strong. David Tunick sold a Cézanne double-sided portrait drawing of the artist’s only son in the six-figure price range. Also in the early days of the fair, French dealer Almine Rech sold a delightfully feminine portrait of a woman by Marie Laurencin—priced between $300,000 and $350,000—a figure who was extremely active within the same Parisian artistic circles of the early 20th Century but has only recently been reconsidered by the market. Rech also placed works by Ali Cherri ($150,000-170,000), Zio Ziegler ($55,000-70,000), Inès Longevial ($40,000-50,000), a new painting by Chloe Wise ($25,000-30,000) and one work by Dylan Solomon Kraus ($20,000-25,000).
As TEFAF remains a stage for both discoveries and rediscoveries, one of the most remarkable inclusions in this year’s edition is a recently resurfaced portrait of an African prince by Gustav Klimt, long thought lost during World War II. Presented by Vienna’s Wienerroither & Kohlbacher Gallery with a €15 million price tag, the extraordinary painting underwent meticulous cleaning, confirming its prestigious attribution. Believed to have remained with Klimt until it hit the block at Vienna’s Samuel Kende auction house in 1923 with a starting price of 15,000 crowns, the work was likely acquired by Ernestine Klein and her husband, a wine wholesaler, as referenced in records from a 1928 “Secession” exhibition—its last known public appearance. The Kleins fled Austria in 1938 as the Nazis took power, living secretly in Monaco and likely leaving the painting behind. It remained unaccounted for until its recent resurfacing and is now back on the market, following a restitution settlement with Ernestine Klein’s heirs.
This year, ninety-one 91 dealers and galleries from thirteen countries and four continents brought their best to New York City. Photo: Jitske Nap
TEFAF, unfortunately, was likely the spring art fair hit hardest by the new tariffs, with dealers facing added costs and bureaucratic complications, particularly in categories like design, antiquities and jewelry, which were present in smaller numbers compared to the Maastricht edition. Still, true quality triumphed over red tape. Friedman Benda sold a unique Wendell Castle piece from 1966 on the first day, while Didier Ltd, a gallery specializing in artist-designed jewelry, quickly placed a seductive gold pendant medallion featuring a sunken-relief rampant bull by Pablo Picasso—made in collaboration with his dentist, Dr. Philippe Châtaignier—as well as a textured gold pendant with a red enamel bird by Georges Braque.
On the antiquities side, a particular standout was the Roman head of a bearded god from the 2nd century AD presented by Charles Ede. The sculpture was striking for its expressive realism: heavily lidded eyes gaze forward with incised irises and drilled crescent pupils, offering a rare glimpse of classical naturalism at the height of the Roman Empire—a period marked by peace, prosperity, imperial stability and cultural grandeur. Meanwhile, David Aron Ltd presented two fascinating Cycladic Venus sculptures, powerful and essential representations of femininity. In the early days of the fair, the gallery also sold a remarkable hollow-cast bronze Horus Falcon dated to the Late Egyptian Period—a time when the falcon’s symbolism carried deep religious and artistic meaning, tied to the god revered as the unifier and protector of the nation. The piece came to market with prestigious provenance, having once belonged to the celebrated Swedish art historian and collector Dr. Emil Hultmark. Another standout in the booth was a set of Corsican bronze objects from the late Bronze Age (circa 900 B.C.), discovered near Ajaccio between 1800 and 1890. The set contains three bow fibulae, including the largest with a typical violin-bow form, together with a dagger, a uniform bronze (likely a belt buckle), a pommel, a disc—possibly part of a horse harness or brooch—and three simple rings that may have been used as a form of proto-currency.
Overall, TEFAF’s steady activity across price points reflects a U.S. art market that is still one of the most fertile grounds for high-end sales. Increasingly selective, American collectors are buying, but only when a work delivers true quality and exceptionality—this fair’s bread and butter.
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.
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.
Pace at Frieze. Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
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 moment.”
Among the more headline-grabbing day-one sales, White Cube placed a large, emotionally raw Tracey Emin canvas for £1.2 million and one of her bronzes for £80,000. The gallery also moved a lyrical work by Etel Adnan for $180,000 and two Antony Gormley sculptures for £325,000 each. A Christine Ay Tjoe painting was acquired by an institution for $280,000—unsurprising given the artist’s recent auction ascent—while two vibrant works by Ilana Savdie, priced in the $100,000 range, found buyers as well. The sales followed the artist’s New York solo debut with the gallery, her first since joining the roster in 2022.
Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac was still holding firm on a monumental upside-down George Baselitz canvas priced at €1 million by the end of preview day. But sales elsewhere were brisk: a €85,000 painting by Martha Jungwirth, a $210,000 Joan Snyder, two Megan Rooney works at £18,000 each and a $130,000 David Salle acquired by a U.S. collector. Ropac also placed a more conceptually driven work by Liza Lou for $225,000.
Next door at Karma, the action was just as lively. The gallery placed a haunting Gertrude Abercrombie painting for $350,000 and a $90,000 oil by Maja Ruznic, fresh off her Whitney Biennial appearance. Other confirmed sales included a Richard Mayhew for $350,000, a Manoucher Yektai for $275,000, a Reggie Burrows Hodges for $175,000, a sculpture by Alan Saret for $150,000 and a punchy, Pop-catchy work by Calvin Marcus for $135,000.
Further down the aisle, Perrotin reported a complete sell-out of its new psychologically dense paintings by Claire Tabouret, with prices ranging from $65,000 to $200,000. Nearby, Nara Roesler also moved multiple works, including a textile piece by Sheila Hicks for $74,000, a work by Marcelo Silveira for $65,000 and an oil painting by Tomie Ohtake for $350,000—riding the momentum of her sold-out booth at last year’s Art Basel Paris.
Frieze New York 2025 opened at the Shed on May 7 in VIP preview. Casey Kelbaugh/CKA
Korean dealer Tina Kim reported strong first-day sales of works by artists with notable institutional traction, including a $150,000 piece by Filipino American artist Pacita Abad, placed alongside a $200,000 work by Lee ShinJa, a Ghada Amer for $175,000, a sculpture by Suki Seokyeong Kang for $80,000 and a new piece by Maia Ruth Lee for $25,000. Not far away, her mother’s gallery, Kukje, also saw a robust day, reportedly placing several works by Dansaekhwa master Park Seo-Bo in the $250,000-300,000 range, following the artist’s passing last year. Additional sales included works by Kyungah Ham ($140,000-168,000), Kibong Rhee ($80,000-96,000) and a Haegue Yang priced between €35,000 and €42,000.
Meanwhile, Goodman Gallery confirmed the placement of a major Carrie Mae Weems work for $100,000—already earmarked for a European institution—along with a Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum for $90,000 and a Ravelle Pillay painting for £35,000. Nearby, Brazilian powerhouse Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel capitalized on the momentum of Beatriz Milhazes’s current Guggenheim show, selling several of her works in the $45,000-60,000 range. The gallery also placed pieces by Wanda Pimentel ($45,000-60,000), Tadáskía ($25,000-40,000) and Antonio Tarsis, whose meticulously composed wood constructions sold for $40,000 to $55,000.
The demand for more ambitious presentations
The appetite for museum-caliber work was evident at Frieze’s preview. Mendes Wood DM placed the entirety of Kishio Suga’s Sliced Stones installation—eight sculptures priced between $200,000 and $300,000—without much hesitation from buyers. James Cohan also reported strong institutional traction, selling several of Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s Calder-esque, organically suspended metal mobiles, priced from $85,000 to $185,000, to a European museum, an American institution and a private collector—riding the momentum of the Vietnamese artist’s breakout U.S. institutional debut at the New Museum in summer 2023. Meanwhile, New York dealer Casey Kaplan devoted the entire booth to Hannah Levy’s alluring, hybrid biomorphic sculptures, and collectors responded accordingly. Several works, priced between $45,000 and $80,000, were swiftly snapped up as Levy’s profile continues to rise—fueled in part by her showing in the 2022 Venice Biennale.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen presented by James Cohan at Frieze. Casey Kelbaugh/CKA
Even the more dynamic and occasionally experimental offerings in the Focus section inspired a strong response. Showing at Frieze for the first time, Parisian and research-centred gallery Sultana reported selling three works by Jean Claracq in the $20,000-30,000 range and two humorously playful works by Turner Prize artist Jesse Darling for €10,000 each. Nearby, Chapter NY captured collectors’ attention, placing multiple works by Milano Chow, priced between $16,000 and $20,000, and Mary Stephenson, with prices ranging from £4,500 to £32,000.
Among the most ambitious presentations in the Focus section was a multimedia installation by Yehwan Song, exploring the discomfort and incommunicability of digital media and online spaces. Presented by Seoul-based G Gallery, the work was acquired by a private institution for $22,000. Leaning further into the multimedia and installation spectrum, London-based Public Gallery made its New York debut with an interactive, video game–based installation by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley that confronts Black trans experiences head-on. Blending reality, gaming, technology and speculative fiction, the artist builds choose-your-own-adventure narratives that compel users to face uncomfortable questions around transphobia and racism—dismantling ethical complacency while centering responsibility, sincerity and care.
Luana Vitra presented by Mitre Galeria at Frieze. Courtesy of the gallery
In the same section, marking its New York debut, São Paulo–based Mitre Gallery presented a solo booth of spiritual, totemic sculptures by Brazilian artist Luana Vitra, who also just opened a solo show at SculptureCenter. Drawing on the history and cosmology of Minas Gerais—the mineral-rich region where she was raised—Vitra explores the metallurgical symbolism and transformative power of minerals to reveal the “spirit in matter.” Her sculptures function as vessels designed to receive, store and transmit energy—works that blur the line between material object and metaphysical conduit. By the end of preview day, the gallery had placed four of Vitra’s pieces, priced between $12,000 and $26,000.
Another standout in the section was the U.S. debut of Indonesian artist Citra Sasmita, presented by Singapore-based Yeo Workshop. Ancestral symbologies unfold in mystical, charged images that explore a visceral and spiritual interconnection between the female body and nature—rendered here in a textile-based installation that seems to transcend the fair’s commercial setting and drift into otherworldly terrain. Titled Vortex in the Land of Liberation, the installation centers on a vertically suspended, embroidered cowhide that uses the traditional Kamasan painting technique and invokes folkloric spirits to evoke feminine power, fertility and the primordial. Drawing from ancient Balinese literature, mythology and iconography, Sasmita creates a personal cosmology that asserts a form of female agency and spirituality in harmony with the cosmos. With prices ranging from $20,000 to $38,000, the presentation aligns with a major Barbican commission in London and the artist’s participation in both the Hawai‘i Triennial ALOHA NŌ and the 16th Sharjah Biennial.
Citra Sasmita’s Vortex in the Land of Liberation presented by Yeo Workshop at Frieze. Courtesy of the artist
Nearby, Bogotá- and Paris-based gallery mor charpentier reported a sold-out solo presentation of Malo Chapuy, whose haunting, jewel-toned paintings draw heavily from Gothic and pre-Renaissance religious art, echoed in the gold leaf backgrounds that transport the subjects to otherworldly levels while channeling a spiritual austerity in new sacred forms refracted through a distinctly contemporary lens. Prices ranged from €12,000 to €22,000, and the swift sales spoke to collectors’ appetite for works that bridge historical gravitas and emerging talent. Further signaling buyer confidence across price points, young L.A. gallerist Matthew Brown also racked up a strong first day of sales, including a mesmerizing Blair Whiteford painting for $45,000, a new work by Kenturah Davis for $40,000 and a TARWUK sculpture for $40,000, along with additional acquisitions such as Vincent Valdez at $45,000, Michelle Uckotter at $25,000 and pieces by rising voices like Olivia van Kuiken ($18,000) and Jack O’Brien ($12,000).
Emerging artists and first-time exhibitors find footing at NADA
Opening in sync with Frieze this year, NADA dealers reported a brisk and in many cases gratifying first day. Now housed in the Starrett-Lehigh Building on Twenty-Sixth Street—a convenient five-minute stroll from Frieze—the fair’s eleventh New York edition brought together one hundred eleven exhibitors, including fifty-four first-timers.
A scene from NADA New York’s VIP Preview. Kevin Czopek/BFA.com
Among the newcomers, London-based gallery Alice Amati sold out its solo presentation of enigmatic, hyperrealist paintings by Danielle Fretwell, priced between $5,000 and $17,000. Fellow Londoner Chilli Projects also had a standout debut, placing every work in its booth by day’s end. The poetic, fragmented meditations on identity and displacement by New Haven–based artist Christopher Paul Jordan, priced between $4,000 and $20,000, found eager buyers. Jordan is currently in residence at Titus Kaphar’s NXTHVN and will show next with James Cohan.
From the West Coast, Los Angeles–based de Boer placed several of Noelia Towers’s unsettling, cinematic figurative works ($10,000-40,000), alongside pieces by Kat Lowish ($6,000) and a large-scale canvas by Rachel Sharpe ($14,000). Minneapolis- and now New York–based HAIR + NAILS also moved early, placing three dreamlike paintings by Julia García. Meanwhile, Rachel Liu Gallery (formerly Rachel Uffner, now in partnership with Lucy Liu) sold two works by Sheree Hovsepian priced at $28,000 and $24,000, tied to the artist’s solo show that opened just ahead of the fair.
Danielle Fretwell presented by Alice Amati at NADA. Photo Gabriele Abbruzzese
The newly launched Chozick Family Art Gallery—helmed by former Uffner sales director Rebekah Chozick—had a promising start, selling several works on day one by Sofía Del Mar Collins, Raphael Griswold and Andrea McGinty, as well as completing a late-evening sale of a work by Sara Gimenez. Another newcomer, MAMA Projects, placed six intimately scaled paintings by Chinese artist Zhi Ding, whose work interrogates the globalization of the American Dream. In NADA’s sculpture section, the gallery also showed Body in trouble (2025), a haunting creature by Nicky Cherry that exists in a liminal space between embodiment and disembodiment, prodding at the fragility of identity as a fixed concept.
Buenos Aires gallery CONSTITUCIÓN brought a quietly stunning solo presentation of Carlos Cima’s moody, intimate domestic scenes, selling out all nine works by day’s end. Another standout came from EMBAJADA, with a booth devoted entirely to Puerto Rican world-builder Joshua Nazario. With his distinctly DIY-meets-Pop aesthetic, Nazario reworks concrete, wood and other industrial materials into sculptures and flat works that slyly dissect status-signaling and emulative behaviors in Puerto Rican life.
Havana-based El Apartamento offered a deeply material meditation on memory and history through Eloy Arribas’s solo booth. His works—priced between $3,200 and $5,800—were generated using the strappo technique, where wax molds capture, layer and distort painted marks over time. Each drawing is tied to a visual genealogy, bearing faint echoes of its predecessors, as figuration gradually dissolves into obfuscation, emergence and erasure. A couple of works had sold by midday.
Longtime NADA exhibitor Kates-Ferri Project (New York) found success with a tight dialogue on geometric abstraction and analog aesthetics, presenting paintings by Uruguayan conceptual artist Guillermo Garcia Cruz and sculptures by Martín Touzon. Two of Garcia Cruz’s paintings sold during the preview, with strong interest in Touzon’s work reported.
Joshua Nazario presented by EMBAJADA at NADA. Photo Luis Corzo | Courtesy the artist and EMBAJADA San Juan
The new tariff threat didn’t discourage South Korean and Japanese galleries, which also showed up in force to the fair this year. A-Lounge Contemporary presented recent Columbia MFA grads Youngmin Park and Ian Ha, placing two of Ha’s works by the evening. Kyoto-based COHJU made its NADA debut with three rising Japanese artists—Takuya Otsuki, Anna Yamanishi and Shu Okamoto—all engaging with the interplay between traditional forms and contemporary expression.
Mexico City–based galleries also had strong momentum at NADA. Third Born, a recently opened gallery, placed several small, poetic canvases by Korean artist Jungwon Ja Hur, whose quiet, existential tone was complemented by ceramics and delicate fabric works inspired by bujagi tradition—all priced under $5,000. Nearby, JO-HS placed four dreamlike paintings by Melissa Rios, whose layered reflections on human connection struck a chord. Naranjo 141, another young Mexico City gallery, made its New York debut in the TD Bank Curated Spotlight with new textile works by New York–based Pauline Shaw. Her intricate tapestries—priced at $11,500 and $8,750—use the metaphor of woven fiber to probe belief systems, emotion and the murky enigma of the natural world. Both works sold on opening day to new clients.
While several collectors admitted to Observer they were waiting to see what Independent had to offer before locking in additional buys, NADA’s preview day signaled an encouraging dynamism. We may no longer be seeing the sold-out stampede of years past, but the fair continues to demonstrate the market’s appetite for emerging voices—and its ability to adapt with resilience to what feel like continuous market shifts.
