Seoul –

“I’m the worst secret keeper in the world,” Pace Gallery CEO Marc Glimcher confided in Seoul, where he was in town for the Frieze art fair being held last week.

The jet-setting art dealer — who recently visited Hong Kong and mainland China — formally announced on Tuesday the opening of a new gallery in Tokyo next year, finally confirming long-swirling rumors that were on occasion stoked by the CEO himself.

“So the reason everyone’s asking me about Japan is because I’m talking to everybody about it. Like ‘What do you think about Japan? Am I crazy?’” he said of the conjecture in the media over the past few years.

The Our Street Night Market, located along Sacramento’s R Street corridor, returned Saturday.”When you do things for the right reasons and you do things to make a cultural impact and do things for your community, no matter how tired you get or whatever ends up happening, it always feels good,” said Shawn Kahan, one of the market’s organizers. “I feel great.”The market is a tribute to the city’s arts and food scene and designed to be an opportunity to bring the community together through art and food.”We try to seamlessly work our way into the neighborhood,” he said of the installations throughout. “We want it to feel like places are activated but we want it to feel like they’re supposed to be there almost.”Bringing the market to Sacramento is a labor of love for Kahan. Kahan said following the passing of the late developer Ali Youssefi, a fervent supporter of the arts and artists, he and his business partner wanted to put together an event that would honor his vision.”It was such a beautiful vision,” he said. “There’s a lot of deep meaning and purpose behind what we do.”Kahan was traveling in Asia, he said and became inspired by the night market culture he experienced there.”I thought that was perfect for something to bring to Sacramento and something that would really resonate here,” he said.Stephanie Bozzalla, of Buenos Aires Grill, said the market has become a tradition for her family’s food truck. The truck serves authentic Argentinian cuisine, including empanadas. “We’ve been coming here since 2018,” she said. “We were one of the original food truck vendors here and we’re just so proud of how far it’s come. It’s such great exposure for all the food trucks in the area. I feel like the entire city is here.”Kahan said roughly 15 to 20,000 people attended Saturday, but that he was still awaiting a final count. The market ran from 11th to 14th streets on R Street from 5 p.m. until midnight Saturday. Activities included live painting, dance performance, dance lessons, outside arcade games, a silent disco and much more.

Hundreds of Lawrence community members showed up Saturday for day one of two of the Haskell Indian Art Market.

Artists and vendors sold wares such as beaded works, jewelry, metal art, paintings, clothing and more. Indian tacos, frybread, fresh lemonade and more food and drinks were also available.

The annual art market, hosted by Haskell Indian Nations University to showcase works by Native American artists, continues through 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, and resumes from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10 at the Haskell Pow Wow grounds, 2535 West Perimeter Road.

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Molly Adams (she/her), photographer for The Lawrence Times, is a Haskell alum with a passion for photojournalism. She strives to create authentic images that portray the true lives of Lawrence community members.

She can be reached at molly (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com, and her public work can be found on her website. Check out more of her work for the Times here.

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A substance that was leaking from a rail car in Lawrence was determined not to be a danger to the community, according to a news release from Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical.

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

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Tobacco companies risked the nation’s health by investing in food companies and deploying tactics to deepen consumer appetite for exceptionally palatable foods packed with addictive sugar, sodium and fat, KU researchers said in a new study.

by Allison Kite, Kansas Reflector

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Intolerable heat and humidity that hovered over Kansas last month set daily maximum temperature records across the state and rivaled all-time highs.

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The back-to-school festivities known as Armory Week pushed the new art season into high gear in New York this week amid jitters over the market correction and uncertainty about the impact of consolidation in the trade-show industry.

It’s telling that much of the chatter in the aisles at the behemoth Javits Center, where the Armory Show opened to VIPs on September 7th, was about a totally different event taking place on the other side of the world—namely, Frieze Seoul, which started just a day earlier in South Korea, drawing away several key international galleries and forcing several others to double-down by participating in both events. The overlap between the two fairs resulted in a congested calendar at the start of the high-stakes season, when some fear a market bloodbath this fall could herald the end of three years of boom.

“We are going nuts,” said Mary Sabbatino, partner of Galerie Lelong & Co., which is participating in the Armory Show and Frieze Seoul while also—deep breath—doing a solo presentation at the Independent 20th Century art fair and an exhibition at its Chelsea gallery. All of this is happening this week.

An installation by Barthélémy Toguo in the Platform section at the Armory Show. Photo: Vincent Tullo

Juggling time, money, and artworks for these competing events is not entirely unfamiliar terrain for the art world. We’ve been here before—and not that long ago. Art fairs became ubiquitous in the 2010s, with some galleries routinely doing more than a dozen a year and occasionally bemoaning the financial and personal strain they caused. Then, three years ago, COVID-19 abruptly shattered international travel and live events. Getting together for air kisses and art commerce suddenly felt life-threatening. As fairs went online, some people swore they would not go back to the way things were.

But… here we are again. The fairs have roared back, and with vengeance, just as the art world is expanding beyond its traditional hubs. Hong Kong, which used to be the center of the art trade in Asia, is facing pressure from Seoul, which races to transform itself into a major destination on the art circuit.

A very crowded VIP day of Frieze Seoul 2023. Photo: Vivienne Chow.

At the same time, there’s consolidation. Art Basel, the biggest global art-fair brand, has become even bigger and shinier after subsuming a rival French fair known as FIAC. The new Parisian event that has resulted is quickly becoming a must for collectors around the world, and especially the Americans.

All of this is exciting—and complicated. Leaving aside the environmental concerns, the basic question is: How is it possible to do it all as a gallery, a collector, an advisor? And how can the big brands like Art Basel and Frieze continue expanding without diluting and cannibalizing themselves? Many Americans, for example, skipped Art Basel’s flagship fair in June because they were oversaturated from all the events in May in New York and wanted to hold out until Paris + par Art Basel in October.

Galerie Lelong presented paintings by Mildred Thompson at the Independent 20th Century art fair. Courtesy: Galerie Lelong

Consider the simultaneous timing of the Armory Show and Frieze Seoul—a calendar conflict that is made even more bizarre by the fact that both events are now owned by the same company, Endeavor Group Holdings, the talent agency and operator of events in sports, fashion, and entertainment. Endeavor, which has owned Frieze since 2016, recently went on a shopping spree, adding two U.S. art fairs, Armory Show and EXPO Chicago, to its portfolio.

Endeavor acquired the Armory Show, a legacy brand dating back to 1913, from Vornado Realty Trust for $24.4 million in July. (That price wasn’t disclosed, but because both companies are publicly traded, the Art Detective unearthed it this week in Vornado’s regulatory filings.) In May, Endeavor also paid $16.5 million to buy the remaining 30 percent stake of Frieze, which now produces art fairs in London, New York, Los Angeles and Seoul, from its founders, the company’s filings show.

(These prices seem like a steal next to the $9.3 billion Endeavor paid in April to acquire WWE, the professional-wrestling company.)

“The overlap is not ideal,” said Paul de Froment, managing partner at Almine Rech gallery, which is participating in both fairs as well as in the Independent 20th Century. “I am assuming they are going to try to change the dates.”

Galerie Lelong’s booth at Frieze Seoul 2023. Courtesy: Galerie Lelong

This hope was expressed by multiple exhibitors, who remain in the dark about the plans.

“While it is not ideal that the two fairs overlap in dates, they cater to different audiences and, as such, the crossover between galleries and collectors is minimal,” Simon Fox, the CEO of Frieze, said in emailed responses to the Art Detective’s questions. “Of course, it would be operationally easier if the fairs didn’t take place at the same time, but that depends on date flexibility at our respective venues.”

No changes are going to be made next year, a person familiar with the company’s plans told me. Frieze New York, which moved from a tent in Randalls Island to the Shed in Hudson Yards two years ago, is going to stay in the Shed. And the two September fairs will also remain in their unfortunate slots—though, Fox said, somewhat mysteriously, “there may be more opportunities to collaborate from early next year.”

“The Shed is cute, but it’s not functional,” said Lisa Spellman, owner of 303 Gallery, standing in a large booth at the Armory Show. “It’s hard to make significant sales when your space is 80 percent smaller than a normal booth.”

As for the New York/Seoul pileup, she found it a “distraction.”

“I know six galleries who would be here but couldn’t,” she said. In fact, the Armory show is down 15 participants from last year, with a total of 225 exhibitors this year. Those who used to be in the fair but are now doing Frieze Seoul include the heavyweights David Zwirner, Massimo De Carlo, and Sadie Coles. As a result, the New York fair feels less blue-chip this year. 

A sculpture by Agnes Denes in the Platform section of the Armory Show. Photo: Vincent Tullo

All dealers are thinking hard about how to allocate resources at an uncertain time for the market, according to Galerie Lelong’s Sabbatino. “Every colleague I’ve talked to has definitely noticed that it’s more challenging,” she said.

After committing to Frieze Seoul and the Independent, Sabbatino herself initially declined to do a booth at the Armory Show—but then, acclaimed curator Eva Respini approached her to participate in the Platform section of large-scale artworks. The work Respini had in mind was a multi-element installation by Cameroon-and-Paris-based Barthélémy Toguo that had appeared at the Venice Biennale in 2015.

“It seemed like a great opportunity to show a significant work in good company and with an esteemed curator,” said Sabbatino. It was also a chance to promote the artist in the U.S., where he’s still not widely known.

There was another practical reason to seize the opportunity: The work, which consists of eight ladders and more than 100 large carved pieces of wood shaped as stamps, happened to be stored in New York. “If I had to ship it from Paris, I wouldn’t have said yes,” Sabbatino said.

A sculpture by Woody De Othello in the Platform section of the Armory Show. Photo: Katya Kazakina

Ben Brown, whose London gallery has branches in Palm Beach, Florida, and Hong Kong, believes that an ability to juggle overlapping fairs may come down to staff and geography. It’s cheaper to ship works from Hong Kong to Seoul than from London, for example—and he had staff to go to both fairs.

Even so, “we are overstretched,” he said. “There’s no salesperson at our London gallery at the moment.”

Another drawback: he would have liked to be in Seoul for the gallery’s debut at Frieze Seoul. But he had additional business commitments in the U.S.

“You have to choose,” he said. “I can’t be in two places at the same time.”

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New York’s fall art season officially began on Thursday with a number of art fairs opening their doors to VIPs and the media, and the sales quickly followed.

At the Armory Show—by far the largest, with more than 240 exhibitors spread across the soaring spaces of the Javits Center on Manhattan’s West Side—several dealers reported significant purchases. Berry Campbell Gallery in New York, for instance, sold a painting by the late American abstract artist Lynne Drexler for US$800,000 and another by her contemporary, the late Alice Baber, also American, for US$200,000; Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco sold a bronze sculpture by Woody De Othello for US$400,000, the fair said.

Dealers invited to exhibit at the Independent 20th Century fair also said the fair was lively throughout the day. Nahmad Contemporary in New York reported most of the works it offered by French modern artist Marie Laurencin, painted in the 1920s and 1930s, were sold. Prices for these figurative works were between US$70,000 and US$190,000. 

“It’s the perfect city to come and do an art fair,” says Francesco Dama of Galleria Lorcan O’Neill Roma in Rome, Italy, who appreciates the informed conversations about the art on display, such as drawings by British artist Tracey Emin or the precise oil landscapes and still lifes of Matvey Levenstein, a Russian-born artist who lives in New York. 

“We have to stay here for days—nine hours a day!—at least having some engaging conversations is a blast,” Dama says.

Other fairs opening up at the same time as the first back-to-school days for New York City students included Photofairs New York—also at the Javits Center—Art on Paper, at Pier 36 on the East River; and Spring Break, which opened Wednesday at 625 Madison Ave in Midtown.

The fall fairs will be a test of how much the primary art market is affected by higher interest rates and the prospect of an economic slowdown, as secondary sales at the auction houses have softened. A dominant conversation among some dealers at the Armory Show on Thursday, however, was the effect Frieze Seoul was having on attendance.

The South Korean fair, Frieze’s second in the city, began on Wednesday and runs through Saturday. Ironically, Frieze announced in July that it had bought the Armory Show, making for an awkward scheduling conflict between two of its major fairs.  

In response to a question about the overlapping events, Nicole Berry, the fair’s director, said the VIP preview of the fair’s third outing at the Javits Center “had both strong numbers and an impressive presence of American and international collectors.” Earlier the fair had provided several names of notable attendees, which included Venus Williams, Anderson Cooper and Zoe Kazan, and collectors Estrellita Brodsky, David Mugrabi, and Alain Servais, among many others.

“Beyond the numbers we are hearing incredible enthusiasm from our exhibitors about the quantity and quality of attendees,” Berry said, adding, “Busy foot traffic during the preview has resulted in major sales and placements in prominent institutions and collections.”

On Thursday, one gallery official who declined to be named said he was disappointed that several prominent collectors who they had hoped would be at the Armory Show to view new works by an artist they represented weren’t there, although he was happy to report several museum curators showed interest. 

Leigh Bassingthwaighte, associate director at SMAC Gallery from Cape Town, South Africa, made a similar observation, noting “some of the big names that would normally be here” were missing. 

However, Bennett Roberts, owner of Roberts Projects in Los Angeles, described the fair as having a good “energy” and said he didn’t get the sense that big collectors were missing. Instead, he was appreciating those who were stopping by and expressing genuine interest in the works on display. Some fairs are purely about “just trying to make a sale,” Roberts says. In this case, “people ask some great questions.” 

The gallery was showing several pieces by some of the well-known contemporary artists it works with, including Jeffrey Gibson, who is representing the U.S. at the 2024 Venice Biennale, in addition to Kehinde Wiley, Amoako Boafo, and Betye Saar. Roberts was finding collectors interested in a new artist he’s working with, Suchitra Mattai, born in Guyana and based in L.A., who creates mixed-media paintings, tapestries, and soft sculpture installations drawing on her Indo-Caribbean heritage. 

Bassingthwaighte, too, says collectors were drawn to the evocative bronzes created by Johannesburg-based artist Mary Sibande on view at SMAC Gallery, which was located in the fair’s Solo section. Sibande’s sculptures and wall hangings feature an avatar of herself called “Sophie” who evolves into different characters, rendered in a changing rainbow of colors, that show the avatar’s increasing strength. The series begins with Sophie as a Black domesticated worker in a saturated royal blue Victorian gown with a white apron and head scarf knitting an equally vivid blue sweater with a Superman logo. 

The work evokes domesticated workers in apartheid South Africa who often took care of everything in a household, and were often the “unseen heroes, keeping everything together,” Bassingthwaighte says.  

At Independent, which, in contrast to the spacious layout of the Javits Center, was tucked in the carpeted halls of the newly restored 1909 Battery Maritime Building on the southern tip of Manhattan, also saw a steady stream of collectors throughout its opening day, according to dealers. 

Luxembourg + Co., a gallery from both London and New York with a location in the fair’s center, saw a lot of interest in a solo exhibition of Baber’s ethereal abstract watercolors and oil paintings, according to the gallery’s Yuval Etgar. Baber was among several female artists of the 20th century whose works are being rediscovered and collected. 

Alexandre Gallery was showing works of two female artists, Loren MacIver, a mostly self-taught American painter whose life spanned the 20th century, and Edith Schloss, a German-born American artist who was part of the post-World War II Chelsea-New York art scene. Both artists spent time in Europe in the mid-20th century, the gallery said. 

MacIver was married to poet Lloyd Frankenberg and her art was influenced by their social circle of modernist poets, including Elizabeth Bishop, e.e. cummings, and Dylan Thomas, says Emma Crumbley, a researcher at the gallery.

“Her work is very focused on moments and objects of everyday life in a way that engages more so with the work of the poets she was surrounded by rather than the artists she was with,” Crumbley says. 

Prices for the paintings, oils on linen, range from US$18,000 to US$95,000, with at least one of them sold on Thursday.

“Part of the reception we’ve been getting is that people said it’s calming to see these paintings, they’re joyful,” she says.

Iconic Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki once again crafts an otherworldly landscape filled with mystery and wonder in his highly-anticipated new film, The Boy and the Heron. Nearing the end of his decades-long career, the Studio Ghibli (previously) director has hinted that this may be his last movie. As a result, an air of mystery has surrounded The Boy and the Heron for some time, but just this week, U.S. audiences were treated with an official trailer.

Upon this first look at footage, small blobbed creatures float into the sky, a woman liquifies to the touch, a large fire glows as it encases an inviting figure, and dozens of frogs clutch onto the protagonist. Viewers are welcomed into Miyazaki’s world imbued with hope, despair, creation, and fantastical encounters, all of which are familiar to Ghibli lovers and exhibit the enigmatic culmination of his legacy. Ultimately, the trailer leaves those watching with a mystifying final note, “Where death comes to an end, life finds new beginning.”

The Boy and the Heron is set to release in theaters nationwide on December 8.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Hayao Miyazaki’s New Film ‘The Boy and the Heron’ Wanders Into a Magical World of Life and Death appeared first on Colossal.

Organizers of the inaugural “Riverdale Art Fest” are asking residents to mark Sunday, Sept. 24, in their calendars as they prepare to launch their first art festival, which they describe as a thrilling component of the Riverdale Y Sunday Market, where delicious food offerings are already a weekly staple.

Designed to introduce talented Riverdale artists to their community and vice versa, organizers said the Riverdale Art Fest will fill the entire center aisle of the market, held in the Riverdale Temple parking lot at 4545 Independence Avenue (near 246th Street) in the Riverdale section of The Bronx, and will feature what the organizers describe as Riverdale artists’ extraordinary work in painting, photography, drawing, watercolor, spin art, acrylics, three-dimensional art, and more.

“Riverdale is a creative community, and we want to emphasize that creativity and give artists a chance to interact with their audience,” said Eric Kollin, co-director of the Riverdale Art Fest. “We see the Riverdale Art Fest as a way to call attention to the great creativity in Riverdale and The Bronx art scene as a whole. Also, obviously, it will promote incredibly talented local artists.”

According to the organizers, the Riverdale Art Fest will also present interactive demonstrations in creativity that will, in essence, bring the artists’ studios to the public, not only giving the Riverdale community a chance to enjoy what was described as the extraordinary creative talent that lies within its borders, but to watch the artistic process in real time. They said there will also be a children’s section to engage young people in creative activities.

“As a center of our community, the Riverdale Y Sunday Market is proud and excited to host the first annual Riverdale Art Fest,” said Shira Silverman, the market’s director and Art Fest co-director. “It’s a way to enrich our offerings for the entire community and, in plain language to ‘up the vibe’ by lending texture to our traditional weekly market.”

The Riverdale Art Fest will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., on Sunday, Sept. 24, extending the Sunday Market’s regular hours. Organizers said there will also be live music to accompany the artwork. Artists should note that there are still spaces available. To participate in the Riverdale Art Festival, contact the organizers at riverdaleartfest@gmail.com.

Convincing dealers, collectors and other art professionals that the industry needs yet another art fair is no small feat in the 2020s. Nevertheless, that is exactly what the organisers of Photofairs New York have been striving to do during the nearly yearlong run-up to its first edition. Although the early returns leave room for refinement, the fair’s unifying concept and strong management give the new event an opportunity to build a valuable bridge to underserved market constituents at the start of the fall art season.

Managed by Creo, a subsidiary of the international expo organiser Angus Montgomery Arts, the Photofairs brand made its New York debut at the Javits Center on Thursday. The first edition brought together a compact 56 exhibitors whose artists can only do what they do because of the camera’s rise to prominence. Some participating dealers, such as New York’s Howard Greenberg Gallery and Los Angeles’s Fahey/Klein Gallery, specialise in high-end classical photography. Others, such as the nomadic Postmasters Gallery and Miami’s Transfer gallery, are best known for championing progressive works in digital media.

“Photography tends to be digested in an art-fair context as one note, and we want it to be a symphony,” says Helen Toomer, the director of Photofairs New York and the former head of the Pulse, Collective Design and IFPDA Fine Art Print fairs (among other credits).

Toomer, in her telling, approaches this venture from a grounding in contemporary art, whereas other constituents approach it from a specific background in photography. But for all sides to engage, they first needed a centrepoint. Nine years after the first Photofairs was held in Shanghai, Toomer and Scott Gray, the chief executive of Creo, believe that their new fair can become that centrepoint in New York.

“The idea for Photofairs is to create space for the medium,” Gray says. “When we launched Shanghai, collecting photos in the Asia Pacific [region] was embryonic. Here, it’s far from that.”

Still, serendipity was needed to bring the event to the US’s art-market capital. According to Gray, Photofairs New York came into being after Alan Steel, the chief executive of the Javits Center, offered the company space in the complex during Armory Week. The one caveat was that leadership at The Armory Show would first need to agree that Photofairs was an ally, not a competitor. Fortunately, Nicole Berry, The Armory Show’s director, immediately lent her support to Toomer and the fair.

The cooperation between the two events has extended beyond intangibles. Photofairs and The Armory Show offer dual-admission tickets granting entry to both fairs on the Friday of their joint run, at a price of $72. (Single-day tickets to Photofairs cost $35, and passes for the full run of the show cost $90.) Toomer also says that each fair’s VIPs and exhibitors are welcome at the other gratis.

Sales versus exposure

According to Lauren Holowesko Perez, one of the founding directors of Tern gallery in the Bahamian capital of Nassau, the decision to show at the inaugural Photofairs New York was multifaceted. One part owed to efficiency, since the gallery had already been accepted to exhibit at The Armory Show; another came out of appreciation for Toomer, whom Holowesko Perez describes as a “big supporter” of Tern; and a third was about continuing the gallery’s mission to counter what Holowesko Perez calls “the stigma of where we come from. We want to show that there is conceptual contemporary art even in the Caribbean.”

Tern pursues this goal across two stands at Photofairs, each featuring works conceived to counter stereotypical ideas of tropicality. The first displays a not-for-sale installation by Tiffany Smith that offers visitors a moment of respite in what the gallery describes as a “wicker throne chair” surrounded by artificial foliage, soothing light and crystals. The main stand features still photos, digital assemblages and video pieces on Polaroid-size screens by Smith and fellow Caribbean artists Steven Schmid, Rodell Warner and Melissa Alcena. Prices for works in the latter stand range from $1,750 to $4,200.

Holowesko Perez says that the gallery had made “a couple” of sales by the end of preview day. Asked about the clientele at the fair to that point, she said: “I wouldn’t say we’re meeting new collectors in particular—more institutional people.”

Dealers elsewhere at Photofairs echoed Holowesko Perez’s experience regarding transactions on preview day. A director at one veteran gallery shrugged and described sales as “OK” by late Thursday afternoon. The top acquisitions confirmed by a fair spokesperson on Thursday evening were five pieces by Thandiwe Muriu, each priced between $14,000 and $19,000, at Paris’s 193 Gallery. Yet some exhibitors flagged that it is characteristic of photo-based fairs for relatively few deals to close prior to day two at the earliest.

“The medium is still hindered by the perception of editions, multiplicity and reproducibility,” says Douglas Marshall, the founder of Los Angeles-based Marshall Gallery. It can be difficult, he adds, for dealers in this niche to instil a sense of urgency in potential buyers, given that both sides know there are multiple editions of most works available. Contrast this with the automatic scarcity of paintings, drawings and sculptures at fairs, and dealers in lens-based images are largely fated to endure a more leisurely transactional timeline.

The irony in Marshall’s case is that several of his artists produce either unique works or unusually small edition runs. Of the three artists on his stand at the Javits Center, only the sepia-toned photos of Albarrán Cabrera are editioned. The others, by John Brinton Hogan and David Samuel Stern, are one-of-a-kind. Prices across the stand range from $1,500 to $8,000 for a backlit portrait of a Julius Caesar bust woven together from strips of translucent vellum.

“Even today, photography is still a bastard medium,” Marshall says. “My artists tend to be too artsy to appeal to the photographic world and too photographic to appeal to the contemporary-art world. Photofairs fit in that way.”

Marshall also cites the diligence of Photofairs’ leadership as a major incentive for him to take a chance on the brand’s first New York fair. He recounted his experience at an early edition of Photofairs Shanghai, where Gray seemingly never rested in trying to improve the conditions for exhibitors after the venue suffered the aftereffects of a typhoon.

Anton Svyatsky, founder of Management gallery on the Lower East Side, praises Toomer in similar terms. Although visitors to his stand were weighted more towards enthusiasts than collectors on preview day, he says Toomer had personally checked in on him three times by late Friday afternoon, a level of attention he has not received at any other fair.

Toomer’s actions stood out even more, since Management has only existed for two years and focuses on emerging artists who often defy easy classification. Among them is the subject of its Photofairs stand: Merik Goma, a recipient of Titus Kaphar’s NXTHVN studio fellowship whose images of grieving figures in constructed interiors walk the line between neo-noir and ambiguous fantasy. Available works are priced from $4,000 for a small photograph to $14,000 for a large lightbox diptych.

“We want to make sure people are cared for, meaning the A/C is working, there are places to sit as well as being stimulated by artwork—and acquiring it,” Toomer says.

Modesty and magnetism in new media

Despite Photofairs’ overtures towards bridging photography and new media, the actual results at the first edition are a work in progress. Of the 56 exhibitors and six partner projects at Photofairs New York, 11 stands (about 18% overall) showed moving-image or screen-based works on preview day.

Magda Sawon of Postmasters says of the ratio: “It’s less than I hoped, but it’s still way better than a typical fair with 99% paintings and one Julian Opie.”

For Photofairs, Postmasters curated an ambitious selection of works that charts the medium’s evolution from still photography and video to generative film and pure software. Prices peak at $150,000 for Horror Chase (2002), an infinitely looping, algorithmically edited video installation by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy. But the stand also hosted the most accessibly priced piece in the fair: mononym artist Damjanski’s Bye Bye Camera app, which removes the humans from anything it is used to photograph for just $2.99.

“The fair planned to be an extension of photography into the next stage of image-making. It’s the definition of what we do: present new forms of expression, often through new technology,” says Sawon.

New forms of expression seemed to be the main draw on preview day. The Postmasters stand was well attended throughout the afternoon, and Sawon reported “very serious enquiries” on multiple pieces. But the unquestioned phenomenon of the fair early on was the work of Huntrezz Janos, who playfully manifested her wishes for a path to a more compassionate and egalitarian understanding of identity.

Examples of Janos’s interactive Infilteriterations series are on view at Transfer’s stand at the venue’s rear. Visitors who face the digital cameras mounted atop a trio of human-size LED screens see their actual faces adorned by colourful, multilayered digital filters equally indebted to Saturday-morning cartoons and the masks of ancient warriors or sci-fi fighters. The experience was a hit, as delighted visitors continuously mobbed Transfer’s stand until the end of preview day.

Transfer began the fair offering nine different Infilteriterations priced at $12,000 each, a price that includes the engineering costs of moving the works from Instagram (where they can be freely used by the public via QR codes on one of the stand’s outer walls) to an independent website outside of Meta’s software architecture (where they will remain just as accessible).

The gallery plans to swap out the three works on view at the fair every day, according to Transfer founder Kelani Nichole. Two of the works had already been acquired by the Thoma Foundation, a US-based nonprofit with a robust collection of digitally informed works.

“Opening day has been wonderful. It’s been so gratifying to see people interact and play with the art and one another,” Nichole says. “People’s faces light up when they see Huntrezz Janos’s work. Our booth is filled with laughter and connection. That’s why so many public collections have expressed interest in this work today.”

It will be worth watching which lessons the organisers of Photofairs New York learn from their first experience at the Javits Center. The changes between year one of a fair and year two can be sizable, and both this event and this medium-specific niche of the art trade feel even more open-ended than most.

“This is our inaugural edition,” says Toomer. “We’re excited to grow with the market. It feels like we’re establishing something that’s needed.”

• Photofairs New York runs through 10 September at the Javits Center, 429 11th Ave, New York