Standouts at the Affordable Art Fair 2025
Image courtesy of Affordable Art Fair.
Returning to New York for the fall edition of the Affordable Art Fair, 85 galleries set up in the heart of Chelsea at the Starrett-Lehigh building. The inaugural Affordable Art Fair began in 1999 in London’s Battersea Park. Since then, it has provided a stage for young galleries and new collectors to get their start in the art world, bringing in around 250,000 guests a year.
In the twenty-five years since then, both the world and the art industry have undergone massive changes, writ large with the introduction of the internet and media. But the fair’s ethos has remained the same: that art can, and should, be more accessible. Its expanded approach to buying introduces a new audience to the world of art collecting. With thousands of pieces ranging from $100 to $12,000, the Affordable Art Fair provides a space for beginning collectors to get their start.
With galleries from more than eight countries represented, I found myself in a line wrapping around the restored, block-long terminal and warehouse. After cramming into a freight elevator, I found myself in an excited crowd of both first-time buyers and seasoned collectors.
Image courtesy of Affordable Art Fair.
It’s been an interesting but difficult year following the reported post-COVID art boom—a year marked by market volatility and driven by uncertain economic futures, tariffs, and trade wars. From blue-chip galleries like Mitchell-Innes & Nash to Clearing, a foreboding forecast has emerged as four New York-based galleries have reported closures in the last month.
However, on the tenth floor of the Starrett-Lehigh building, the excited sounds of overlapping voices drowned out any thoughts of market instability. Bringing small, independent galleries and underrepresented artists to the forefront in a breath of fresh air, what results is a meditation on what could be as galleries begin to shift their distribution strategies to create more lasting in-person connections with buyers.
Daphne Anastassiou, Trip to the Unconscious—Angel III, 2014. Mixed media on canvas, 41 x 29 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Zapallar Collective: Daphne Anastassiou, Trinidad Bascuñán Oviedo
One of my first stops on my journey through the venue hall was located in the farthest corner: a splash of explosive color, and I was hooked.
Featuring pieces by Chilean artists Daphne Anastassiou and Trinidad Bascuñán Oviedo, Zapallar Collective unites conversations about geographic and cultural histories within Latin America. Spanning action-driven paintings and textiles, this booth was a bright and vibrant take on Chilean culture, paying homage to spirituality and the tension between colors and textures.
Daphne Anastassiou’s vibrant, action-driven brushstrokes were a standout to me, utilizing the energy of abstract expressionism in collaboration with dancing and movement. Tied in with Trinidad Bascunan Oviedo’s textiles that borrow from map fragments and landscapes, their presentation served as a strong introduction to the gallery’s work examining North-South American crossings and the creative energy found in built histories.
Olivia Chigas, His Hands Around Her Waist (After Weegee), 2024. Graphite and charcoal on paper, 24 x 18 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
Harsh Collective: Jacky Boehm, Olivia Chigas, Katie Leimbach, Mary Royall Wilgis
Celebrating their third edition, Harsh Collective’s presentation Silhouette is the gallery’s graduating exhibition from the Affordable Art Fair Fellowship. In the last three years, they’ve grown with the support of the fellowship program, lessening the initial burden of investing in the fair market and allowing the gallery to expand its presence in the fair circuit.
Featuring artists Jacky Boehm, Olivia Chigas, Katie Leimbach, and Mary Royall Wilgis, the exhibition is an exploration of exposures and forms. The ephemeral lighting of Wilgis’s paintings, featured alongside the modernist noir styling of Chigas, was an aesthetic meditation on the nebulous in-betweens of shadows thrown and light cast.
Philip Williams, REFUGE & ETERNITY, 2024. Oil on canvas, 100 × 100 × 3 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
ArtDog Gallery: Philip Williams, Pete Hawkins, Claudia de Vilafames, Becky Munting
London-based gallery ArtDog stood out in the mix, with Philip Williams’s self-described “Bacoquerie” style taking the main stage. Exploring themes of baroque and rococo, as one would imagine, the resulting style is a highly saturated composition that examines the border of representation and abstraction. REFUGE & ETERNITY (2024) is a vibrant, familiar-yet-unfamiliar representation of classical forms, contemplating European signifiers of status and authority, subverting the strict classical rules, and placing the fresco-inspired works in a contemporary context.
Pete Hawkins’s postage stamp-based Western paintings also made an appearance, lending an air of escapism with beautiful blues in booth D3. His micro-scenes, borrowed from lands near and far, create a winding narrative of life on the range, transporting the viewer through recreated postage. Lending to this decadent feast of oil paintings were Claudia de Vilafames’s beautifully ripe figs and Becky Munting’s flitting berry eaters, leaving the viewer wanting for nothing more than perhaps a succeeding pear tree.
Madalena Negrone, Untitled, 2025. Oil on canvas, 11.81 x 11.81 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Tourné Gallery: Alejandro Rauhut, Madalena Negrone, Cristina Vergano
An advisor to the collections of museum trustees, major philanthropists, Fortune 500 executives, dignitaries, and institutions, Tourné Gallery has a wide range of international artists in its collection. With Alejandro Rauhut’s mirrored projections and Madalena Negrone’s swirling and rhythmic entanglements, Tourné’s booth was otherworldly, peering down the rabbit hole of internal and external reality-adjacent futures, curating pieces that examine the human condition. Also featured in Tourné’s catalogue are Cristina Vergano’s classical and surrealist paintings. Featured in the collections of Whoopi Goldberg, Robert and Cortney Novogratz, and Madonna, there’s a tongue-in-cheek Magritte-esque humor to her world.
Won-Geun Kim, Cute Boxer, 2025. Epoxy resin, 13.5 × 10 × 86.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and ART MORA.
ART MORA: Eun Hee Choi, Won-Geun Kim
By the time I got to ART MORA, there was a crowd forming, and the exhibitor was taking down paintings left and right. A couple was buying a matching set from Eun Hee Choi’s bouquet of living floral arrangements, while Won-Geun Kim’s little men stood guard over the booth. Founded by Sunny Shin in 2012 in Chelsea, the gallery not only represents within the white cube, but in public spaces as well. Showing a dynamic range of contemporary and classical artists, the gallery represents both emerging and established artists. I was also drawn by Hye-Young Noh’s primary color, anemone-esque oil landscapes. A part of the South Korean artist’s oeuvre exploring forest landscapes was a calming way to round off my viewing experience at the Affordable Art Fair.
The Affordable Art Fair runs from September 17 through 21, 2025.
