The Best Booths of New York Art Week 2023

The first New York art fair week of 2023 is upon us. As various fairs opened their doors this week, our team was on the ground scoping out the highlights—from fresh, emerging discoveries, to hidden 20th-century gems, to prime works from some of the most celebrated artists working today.

Below, we share the standout booths from Future Fair, Independent, and TEFAF New York.

Future Fair

May 10–13, Chelsea Industrial, 535 West 28th Street

On Wednesday at 4 p.m., a growing queue of fairgoers waited along West 28th Street, eager to trade beautiful 70-degree weather for the Chelsea digs of Future Fair. And as the doors opened, the VIP preview erupted into a high-energy, pleasantly crowded affair, with streams of collectors young and old rubbing elbows as they sought out the inevitable artist discoveries that the fair has become known for.

Now in its third physical edition, the young, reputable fair, co-founded by Rachel Mijares Fick and Rebeca Laliberte, is hosting 57 exhibitors—up from 45 last year—from 20 countries, in a larger, 28,000-square-foot floor plan.

“We’re really excited to see a sort of a return to nature, and a lot of painting of domestic spaces,” said Laliberte of the resounding trends seen across the fair. “Perhaps the post-pandemic era has something to do with it, this kind of return to looking inwards and finding a sense of belonging? And the natural landscape is highlighted in a lot of paintings.”

Less than 90 minutes into the preview, she was pleased with the turnout, including familiar faces making the rounds and sales spreading. “I think the intergenerational aspect of the fair is something that is very special,” Laliberte added. “We have dealers that are 25 years old, that just opened their galleries in the past couple of years, and then we have dealers that have been in the game for 20 years.” The fair also boasts some galleries and artists that have never exhibited in New York before.

Below, we share five favorite booths from the 2023 edition of Future Fair.

Superposition and Cierra Britton Gallery

Booth T5

With works by Naïla Opiangah and Amy Amalia

Storm Ascher, founder of Superposition, and Cierra Britton, founder of her eponymous gallery, first met a year ago when both were included in Jasmin Hernandez’s feature for Artsy, “The New Generation of Black Women and Nonbinary Gallerists.” That spring, Britton visited Future Fair for the first time to see Ascher’s booth.

This year, they’ve come full circle as the rising gallerists, who both run dynamic, nomadic programs, mount a joint booth dedicated to two promising young talents: Accra-based Naïla Opiangah, presented by Superposition, and New York–based Amy Amalia, presented by Cierra Britton Gallery. “I’m super excited to collaborate with Cierra Britton and to have this powerhouse of Black women,” Ascher said. “I’m very happy to be showing with Superposition—Storm is one of my best friends,” Britton added.

By chance, both gallerists chose artists who are creating figurative work that incorporates elements of abstraction. The oil paintings by Opiangah, featuring moss-colored, faceless figures emerging from a void, are from the artist’s “Chaos Agent” series. “She has been thinking about how you’re in a portal, and how you can go from calm to chaos so quickly,” Ascher explained. “She’s working with the body and its curves, and she’s moving further and further away from figuration into abstraction.” The large works are priced at $8,500 each, while smaller pieces range from $1,500–$3,000.

The other half of the booth is filled with Amalia’s latest body of work, titled “The Boundless,” in which women’s faces are painted within entrancing black-and-white spirals. “The series is all about exploring spirituality, healing, meditating, and going inward and reflecting,” Britton explained. “The spirals you see are intentional for the viewer to think about what it would look like to go inward, but they also hypnotize the viewer into a meditative state.” One has to get up close to the painting to see the figures, which serve as spiritual guides, creating the hypnotic effect that the artist creates. Amalia’s works, oil paintings on cradled wood panels, are priced at $4,500–$5,000 per piece.

Huxley-Parlour

Booth F16

With works by Sophie Lourdes Knight, Bethany Hadfield, Anna Ortiz, Sarah Schlesinger, and Oliver Mulvihill

Huxley-Parlour’s booth is hung with a range of new works by emerging talents. “We’ve come over presenting a group selection of artists at early career stages, most of them based in London plus two New York–based artists,” said the gallery’s Alexandra MacKay. “They’re all very much doing their own thing, but each exploring personal relationships to the contemporary, in different ways—such as traditional landscape genres and Bethany Hadfield’s more abstracted works that have a beautiful engagement with the digital realm.” Large, eye-catching works by Hadfield and Sophie Lourdes Knight anchor the booth, though there are true gems to be found among the small-scale works on view.

A trio of deep blue-green night scenes by Brooklyn-based Sarah Schlesinger were among the best discoveries of the fair—and collectors were taking notice. These narrow horizontal works, picturing softly rolling waves or rows of hedges, can only be fully appreciated in person. Intimate in scale, they invite slow, careful looking and reward the viewer with a sense of calm.

Notable, too, are the small oil-on-linen canvases of British artist Grace Lee. Carefully cropped to home in on memorable vignettes—from a fire escape to a haloed head to a baby bird squawking—the artist’s inspirations are wide-ranging: the collection of the British Museum, the works of Utagawa Hiroshige, and the New Testament.

Red Arrow Gallery

Booth T4

With works by Emily Weiner

Ahead of the fair, Emily Weiner was ranked at the top of our data-driven list of trending artists at Future Fair. And seeing the works in person, it’s clear why. The Nashville-based Red Arrow Gallery dedicated its Future Fair booth to Weiner, who is also based in Nashville—her first solo fair presentation. Previously, the artist had lived in New York for two decades, pursuing her practice and running a gallery. It’s only in the past year or so that Weiner’s star has been on the rise.

The artist’s works tend to be sleek, serene paintings rife with velvety blue skies; symmetrical, parted theater curtains; playful, puppeteer-like hands; and allusions to art history. These canvases are often couched in handmade ceramic frames that Weiner makes as well.

All of the works are created from Weiner’s distinctively feminist and art historically informed point of view. Weiner studied art history at Barnard College and layers her work with imagery from a wide range of sources, from Greek vessels to Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres (1924); the latter is seen in several of the works on view, subverting the way that Man Ray objectified the female form.

“I’m looking at archetypal imagery and how Carl Jung’s ideas of the collective unconscious intersect with art history,” explained Weiner, who was present at the booth. “I’m trying to make a more intuitive version of the canon, a version for common people.”

Double V Gallery

Booth F13

With works by Arsène Welkin and Bela Silva

The Marseilles- and Paris-based Double V Gallery presents a charming array of works on paper by French artist Arsène Welkin and Portuguese artist Bela Silva—both of whose works are being shown in the U.S. for the first time. The left side of the booth is lined with six works by Welkin, whom the gallery has represented since 2021; works, in oil pastel and oil paint, are priced around $3,500. Playful portraits and still lifes, the works feel current, though they’re also clearly rooted in art history. Based in Arles, Welkin draws upon the region’s local dress and traditions, like bullfighting, as well as the artists who spent time in the city: Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Picasso.

On the adjacent wall are the quietly dazzling works by Silva, whom Double V is showing for the first time. Silva responds to the Portuguese azulejo traditions—the famed, hand-painted ceramic tiles that are known to be found across the country’s façades. The framed works are priced from $2,500–$4,000 per piece. Gallery founder Nicolas Veidig-Favarel noted that Silva is responding to the traditional art form while making it her own, approaching the familiar motifs in a joyful, fantastical way.

La Loma Projects

Booth R4

With works by Pace Taylor and Jieun Reiner

The Los Angeles–based La Loma Projects presents a two-artist booth dedicated to Pace Taylor and Jieun Reiner. Taylor’s works are perhaps the most compelling figurative works at the fair—a trio of large pastel and pencil drawings on paper doused in brilliant color and a commanding presence that’s difficult to ignore (works are priced from $3,500 for smaller works to $5,350 for the largest).

La Loma Projects founder Kirk Nelson said it was a “no-brainer” to bring Taylor’s works to the fair. While Taylor had a solo show at the gallery in 2022, Nelson had shown the artist in a group show previously. He recalled seeing the artist’s work in person for the first time, early on in their career, and remarking how impressive it was. “When you see the layering that goes on, it’s a whole different thing; you’re getting the graphic element, and then also the way the Old Masters paint, the dark to light, the graphite underneath for the darker values, the way they build up values.” He noted that the work recalls forebears like R.B. Kitaj and one piece in particular, hung at the center of the booth, The Eyes of Dawn are Bloodshot (2023), is reminiscent of Otto Dix.

—Casey Lesser

Independent New York

May 11–14, Spring Studios, 50 Varick Street

The popular New York Metro account on Twitter described Thursday’s forecast as such: “80-degree weather with a light breeze and comfortable dew points.…The vibes are VERY good.” These “very good” vibes fully permeated into the refurbished industrial space of Spring Studios, where Independent fair has been located for the past decade. The fair attendees, which was heavily dominated by New York–based galleries, seemed to have fully embraced spring’s weather, reflected in the high volume of floral sundresses.

Despite the peppy zeal that the sunshiner brought to the city, the artwork at Independent often reflected the anxiety about the growing legislative violence against women. In particular, Los Angeles–based Night Gallery’s two-person booth of sculptures by Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack and paintings by Christine Wang aptly captured the dark zeitgeist of meme culture. In particular, Wang’s paintings of demented memes did the unthinkable, capturing, in the way only memes can, what these strange political times feel like. Her work, and others, reminds us that even with “VERY good vibe” weather, sometimes the best representation of the moment is a diagram of a uterus that looks like a horned, fire-breathing devil.

Below are Artsy’s five best booths at Independent 2023.

REGULARNORMAL

Ground Floor, Booth 1

With works by Melissa Joseph

Melissa Joseph’s felt “paintings” greet viewers on the ground floor of the fair. New York–based gallery REGULARNORMAL presents a solo booth of Joseph’s works that features three large-scale felt paintings and two smaller works. Joseph constructs her paintings through needle felting, which allows her to experiment with texture and depth in her narrative, figurative works.

Structured around recollected images, Joseph’s figurations attend to the liminality of frequent travel. Her recent body of work is inspired by her inability to travel to her father’s home in India during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the experience of finally returning home once the travel restrictions were lifted. Through the use of felt, these images of a train, a family meal, or a memory of a sibling riding a bicycle convey a feeling of time rather than simply represent the scene.

Archie Raphulu, one of the gallery directors, described Joseph’s works as “landmarks for viewers to orient themselves within the world of her practice. The subjects, sometimes in motion or transit and other times at a point of choice, invite the viewer to travel into the middle of the deeply personal yet relatable episodes she has meticulously rendered.” By mid-day, the gallery had placed one large-scale work with a private collector and were fielding institutional interests.

Various Small Fires

Sixth Floor, Booth 11

With works by Wendy Park

At the Dallas-, Seoul-, and Los Angeles–based gallery Various Small Fires, Wendy Park’s vibrant large-scale paintings of household objects immediately grab the audience’s eyes on the sixth floor. Park’s flatly rendered paintings, à la Alex Katz, are a reflection of her experience as a first-generation Korean American. In particular, Park represents her relationship between her parents and her experience with American culture through food objects and dishes.

In Army Soup (2023), yellow Coors Light beer cans confront a can of Spam, chopped peppers, and Korean snacks on a table. While the painting is seemingly innocuous, the work and related paintings in her solo booth index the tensions between Korean heritage and an American culture that prides itself on its homogenizing values.

Gallery director Adrian Zuñiga stated that Park’s work is a loving reflection of her parents’ labor to make it possible to do what she does in life. The mixture of cultures in her paintings honor that sacrifice. Park’s work resonated with collectors: Several works were already placed upon the fair’s opening.

Peres Projects

Sixth Floor, Booth 5

With works by Jeremy

Berlin-, Seoul-, and Milan-based Peres Projects brought a solo booth of work by painter and sculpture artist Jeremy. The works on display function as an extension of Jeremy’s recent solo exhibition at the Berlin gallery, “Morning Opulence,” which closed in March of this year. This dialogue with the artist’s solo exhibition was evident in the hot pink carpet and pastel pink–painted walls that decorated the gallery’s booth, mimicking the installation of “Morning Opulence.” The pink interiors provided backdrop for the artist’s moody, muted paintings that unpack gender identity through the mythological figure of the Chimera.

Evocative of the Surrealist paintings by artists Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini, Jeremy’s lusty and lush paintings function as portals to an otherworldly environment where bodies mutate and merge together. “We wanted to create this universe for the show…where anything is possible,” one of the gallery directors said to Artsy.

Peres Projects, which celebrated its ninth year attending Independent, had high energy and a heavily trafficked space by mid-day. The pink-plastered booth made the gallery one of the more visually dynamic spaces at the fair.

Kapp Kapp

Fifth Floor, Booth 14

With works by Stanley Stellar and Beverly Semmes

Housed in a somewhat enclosed room at the fair is New York–based gallery Kapp Kapp, which presented a two-person booth of photographs by Stanley Stellar and paintings and collages by Beverly Semmes. “We’ve been calling this our little Kapp Kapp lounge,” Sam Kapp, co-owner of the gallery, told Artsy. This “lounge” is located up a separate slate of stairs on the fifth floor. The extra space allowed the gallery to bring a larger sculptural painting by Semmes while also displaying plenty of research materials related to Stellar’s legendary body of work. The intimacy of the space removes the gallery from the mayhem below and enables attendees to have some much-needed time to reflect and discuss the works on view.

Semmes’s large-scale sculptural painting is part of her ongoing “feminist responsibility project” series, in which the artist rearranges images from 1970s and ’80s pornographic magazines. In Semmes’s work, these intricate displays of women’s bodies are remixed to comment on consumer culture.

Meanwhile, Stellar’s black-and-white studio portraits of gay men adorn the walls of the exhibition lounge. The legendary photographer is most known for his works documenting queer culture on the New York piers in the 1970s. The photographs at Independent are from his rarely exhibited studio portraits of gay men in the 1990s during the height of the visibility of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Although some of the portraits feature nudity, Stellar’s photographs capture a tender erotics of care rather than an explicit one. As Kapp said to Artsy, “The works are a commentary on the body and the extension of it.…I feel that freedom of the body is the underlying approach for both of these artists.”

P.P.O.W

Sixth Floor, Booth 4

With works by Grace Carney and Jessica Stoller

In a dynamic two-person booth from New York–based gallery P.P.O.W, abstract artist Grace Carney and ceramist Jessica Stoller focus on the gendered female body in society. In Carney’s pastel-colored abstractions, the artist builds and erases layers, a process she views as a metaphor for unearthing the body’s vulnerability. The vivid work lures audiences into a landscape that attends to the various histories of interpersonal and public oppression of women’s bodies.

Stoller’s ceramics more clearly engage with the history of persecution against women. In Untitled (Pry) (2022), audiences see a cloaked woman tearing open her womb, recalling the anatomical venus sculptures of the 19th-century. Those sculptures have their own sordid history, as scientists used cadavers of precious individuals without consent of the individual or next of kin.

In another sculpture, a figure’s face is surrounded by light blue scales with a large butterfly on its head, which Ella Blanchon from P.P.O.W described to Artsy as being symbolic of abortifacients and their role in witch trials. For the artist, the witch trials’ origins were a way to punish women and their relationship to alternative medicine. Blanchon added, “These artists are interested in our relationship with our bodies and nature. They consider how the police and abuse of women’s bodies parallel the abuse and destruction of nature.”

—Ayanna Dozier

TEFAF New York

May 12–16, Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue

Following a successful return to its home turf of Maastricht in March, the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) returned to the Park Avenue Armory for its eighth edition in New York.

Set amid the Gothic Revival former National Guard armory, the 91 exhibitors are spread across the 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, and sprawl into surrounding rooms across two floors. Galleries and dealers from 13 countries are represented at the fair, with 13 exhibitors making their debut at this year’s edition.

TEFAF is an organization that prides itself on variety in disciplines, mediums, and periods, representing everything from manuscripts to modernist paintings. The fair’s New York edition might be smaller than its Dutch counterpart (which hosted 240 exhibitors earlier this year), but it’s just as lavish: Visitors to the VIP preview on Thursday imbibed on cool flutes of champagne and freshly shucked oysters—staples of the TEFAF experience—while surrounded by bursting floral displays.

High-quality art, too, was not in short supply. Exhibitors brought big-name works in high quantities, and collectors—including celebrities like John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, and Sienna Miller—turned out in force to peruse them.

Below, we share five favorite booths from the 2023 edition of TEFAF New York.

Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts

Booth 357

With works by Winold Reiss, Joseph H. Freedlander, Jacques Lipchitz, N.C. Wyeth, and Andrew Wyeth

TEFAF is a fair with a reputation for traversing art history, but Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts takes things a step further by presenting a genuine slice of New York heritage at the Armory.

The gallery is exhibiting a pair of vast, luscious murals by Winold Reiss that were created in 1938 for the dining room at the former Longchamps restaurant on the Empire State Building’s ground floor. Originally a series of eight, the works were presumed destroyed by the 1960s, when the restaurant became a Mississippi riverboat-themed eatery, and later a Starbucks in 2008. The works are priced in the low seven figures as a pair.

Resplendent in tropical imagery and bright color, the works evoke their period vividly. They also resurface at a notable moment for artist, who has had recent retrospectives at Hirschl & Adler and the New York Historical Society. The New York Times last year called Reiss an “immigrant modernist way ahead of his time,” and the artist is slated to appear in a number of group exhibitions next year, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Doubling down on the New York theme, the gallery also shows two vast canvases from N.C. Wyeth: The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 (1941) and Puritan Cod Fishers (1947). Wyeth was commissioned by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to paint a series of murals for its New York Headquarters at One Madison Avenue. The group of paintings would collectively become known as “The New England Series,” and was installed in the employee lounge and escalator landings. Wyeth passed away in 1945, before the series was completed and the remainder of the works were finished by his son-in-law John McCoy and his son Andrew, who is credited on Puritan Cod Fishers.

Pace Gallery

Booth 301

With works by Louise Nevelson

Pace Gallery set aside its prime slot at the entrance to the main fair hall with a solo booth of 11 collages and five wooden sculptures by Louise Nevelson created between the 1950s and ’80s.

The daughter of a lumberjack-turned-junkyard owner, Nevelson took to using discarded materials in her work, a practice that would become a fixture of her nearly six-decade career. Nevelson’s collages, which are rarely exhibited, are constructed from new and found materials including metallic foil, cardboard, sandpaper, tape, wood, spray paint, and newspaper.

Emphasizing the rawness of their material origin, these works showcase the artist’s inventiveness in a new light, while the five accompanying wood painted sculptures are more typical of the artist’s imposing, monochromatic visual language that made her one of the most acclaimed sculptors of the 20th century.

Pace Gallery has represented Nevelson since 1963, and this presentation comes off the heels of a landmark exhibition for the artist last year in the Procuratie Vecchie in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, a collateral event of the Venice Biennale.

Petzel Gallery

Booth 370

With works by Jorge Pardo

Jorge Pardo’s hulking, crimson-lacquered Mountain Bar takes up half of Petzel Gallery’s booth in an attention-grabbing display. Originally located in L.A.’s Chinatown, the bar served as both an art installation and a cocktail bar from 2003 to 2012. The space was not only as a hub of creativity for the local art scene, but it also housed the Mountain School of Arts, California’s oldest continuous artist-run school, which hosted talks and seminars with leading artists and curators.

Pardo’s bar is accompanied by a series of ceiling lights also designed by the artist. These lamps, which take inspiration from Chinese lanterns and insect legs, are strange forms that release smatterings of light and produce unusual shadows. As is often the case with several of his public works, Pardo blurs the edges of design and sculpture to intriguing effect.

The bar might take the limelight, but there’s also a pair of the artist’s impressive, lumpy Untitled abstract works made from acrylic and colored pencil on the opposite wall.

Richard Green

Booth 324

With works by William Scott, Lynn Chadwick, Winston Churchill, Bridget Riley, Henry Moret, Barbra Hepworth, Albert Marquet, Edgar Degas, Henri Fantin Latour, Henri Le Sidaner, Antony Gormley, Howard Hodgkin, Albert Marquet, Camille Pissarro, Henry Moore, Joseph Oppenheimer, Josef Albers, and Frank Auerbach

Mayfair stalwart Richard Green doesn’t do many art fairs, but when it does, visitors can be assured that the TEFAF regular will throw everything but the kitchen sink into its displays. This dizzying—if often beguiling—presentation features an array of works by and 19th- and 20th-century heavyweights, with a consistent, solid level of quality throughout.

The presentation is foregrounded by Edgar Degas’s 1882–85 pastel Preparation pour la classe, a rippling, sensitive depiction of dancers in preparation at the Paris Opera House, where the artist was a season ticket holder. It’s set near another standout work, Henry Moore’s Family Group (1948), which is part of a series of tender, personal drawings by the artist inspired by a public commission for the Village College Impington progressive school.

This is a generous booth with offerings for a variety of tastes: Henry Moret’s L’Anse des Pilotes, Ouessant (1902) is a sunny treat; Camille Pissarro’s Chaumieres a Auvers, pres de Pontoise (1879) is a energetic depiction of agricultural life; and a shelf of small sculptures from Barbara Hepworth, Lynne Chadwick, and Antony Gormley make for a formidable trio.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Booth 303

With works by Ingrid Donat, Line Vautrin, Nacho Carbonell, Frederik Molenschot, Vincenzo de Cotis, Roger Herman, and Frederick Molenschot

Curated by artist Ingrid Donat, Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s serene, purpose-built booth centers mainly around the French Swedish artist herself alongside French artist, jeweler, and designer Line Vautrin.

Donat presents her own work in bronze, which ranges from monumental cabinets to mirrors and objets d’art. Her artworks, recognizable for their intricate surface patterns, deftly complement a trio of vintage colored glass and handmade resin mirrors from Vautrin that riff off motifs of the sun with touches of alchemy and mythology.