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<\/p>\nFew art-historical moments are eulogised quite like New York\u2019s Downtown scene in the 1970s and 80s. At Frieze New York (until 17 May), the city\u2019s late-20th-century history of experimental artistic production anchors a number of gallery presentations: a monumental linear abstract painting by the veteran New Yorker Virginia Jaramillo dominates Hales\u2019s stand, while Champ Lacombe is showing archival footage and artefacts from Antoni Miralda\u2019s Gesamtkunstwerk restaurant-cum-art project El Internacional, which operated in Tribeca between 1984 and 1986.<\/p>\n
As the city\u2019s dealers and collectors reach back to\u00a0this\u00a0radical recent past, the realities of a more commercially-minded present are front of mind, thanks in part to the artist Josh Kline\u2019s widely discussed essay\u00a0\u201cNew York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art.\u201d Published this February in the academic journal\u00a0October,\u00a0it\u00a0argues that the city\u2019s prohibitively high rents have entirely eliminated the potential for its artists to foster risk-taking practices.<\/p>\n
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Antoni Miralda\u2019s Coke-Tail-Float (1985), from his restaurant-cum-art project El Internacional, is on the stand of Galerie Champ Lacombe Courtesy Antoni Miralda and Galerie Champ Lacombe<\/p>\n
Kline\u00a0hardly\u00a0articulates a new phenomenon by decrying New York\u2019s exorbitant\u00a0costs, and his polemic belongs to a long tradition known as the \u201cWhy I\u2019m Leaving New York\u201d essay. But the article has nonetheless gripped art world discourse. Published a few months after the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election on a platform of affordability, its central question is poignant as ever: what must be sacrificed in order to live here? If mounting financial pressure is corroding the imaginations of New York\u2019s artists, it is also forcing young galleries to stretch themselves during the city\u2019s turbo-charged May art season.<\/p>\n
For several small New York galleries, this means simultaneously participating in multiple art fairs. In Frieze\u2019s Focus sector for galleries under 12 years old, the Lower Manhattan space Europa has brought an\u00a0outr\u00e9\u00a0installation by Aki Goto, consisting of a dentist chair and tools covered in glitter, in which she has embedded a screen showing a video of her family. Focus encourages less commercially minded presentations in exchange for lower stand costs ($12,000), so to ensure a healthy sales week, Europa is also showing paintings at Independent New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be resourceful but also strategic,\u201d says Pali Kashi, the gallery\u2019s director. The risk is likely to have been rewarded: Goto\u2019s installation is on hold to an Asian museum. Priced at $28,000, its sale would cover the gallery\u2019s stand costs for both fairs.<\/p>\n
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A number of sculptures by Deondre Davis are on the Gordon Robichaux stand in the Focus section Photo: Steven Molina Contreras<\/p>\n
Across town at Esther, the\u00a0boutique, booth-less fair that is holding its third and final edition in the historic Estonian House (until 16 May), the Tribeca-based dealer Silke Lindner is exhibiting wall sculptures by Gozi\u00e9 Ojini (priced between $7,500 and $11,000), consisting of lightly tarnished brass instruments mounted on burgundy velvet. Not content with staging one show when she could do three, Lindner is also presenting sculptures by Nina Hartmann at Independent and in her eponymous space on Broadway.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of my sales are to New York collectors,\u201d Lindner says. \u201cMaximising in-person interactions in this city is important\u2014this is where collectors are and you need constant physical presence to cut through the noise of images online.\u201d<\/p>\n
As younger galleries are forced into a frenetic pace, they are equally conscious about expanding too quickly. \u201cOur friends in the middle are really struggling,\u201d says Sam Gordon, who co-founded the New York gallery Gordon Robichaux nine years ago. This year, in Frieze New York\u2019s Focus sector, the gallery is exhibiting a standout presentation of unprimed canvas paintings and small sculptures by Chicago-based artist Deondre Davis.<\/p>\n
Gordon has no desire to grow from his boutique space in Union Square, or to join the exodus of galleries to Tribeca. \u201cA mid-sized gallery I know needs to sell $60,000 each month to break even,\u201d he says. \u201cOur key is to not incur any debt. We will stay lean, mean and precise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this careful strategy, Gordon adds: \u201cIf I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn\u2019t have opened a gallery.\u201d He adds that dealers in New York are typically under \u201csome sort of illusion\u201d about the realities of doing business in the city.<\/p>\n
Kline\u2019s essay concludes by encouraging artists to abandon New York for cheaper cities (he cites Philadelphia as a prime example) in order to sustainably develop more experimental studio practices. For dealers, though, New York appears a tough drug to quit, and its young gallerists usually maintain they would rather stay near a dense pool of collectors, than chase or help cultivate potential sites of artistic production emerging across the country.<\/p>\n
\u2018More freedom and fun\u2019<\/p>\n
Breaking this mould is Hans Goodrich, a gallery founded in 2024 in Chicago, which runs a programme more akin to a European kunstverein than a US commercial gallery. Its recent shows included works by the late experimental filmmaker Edward Owens and a\u00a0scarecrow-like sculpture made of discarded clothing and kombucha fungus by Nole Giulini.<\/p>\n
The gallery\u2019s co-founder, Daisy Sanchez, says that the relatively low overhead in Chicago\u2014she estimates the $2,800 monthly rent for two
separate spaces is around one-tenth of comparable costs in New York\u2014allows for \u201cso much more freedom and fun\u201d. The gallery also benefits from a \u201cless saturated commercial scene\u201d, with \u201cfewer artists we are interested in being represented\u201d.<\/p>\n
Yet at this moment, the gravitational pull of New York still feels undeniable: numerous artists Hans Goodrich shows are associated with the city. Sanchez cites Chicago as the birthplace of two influential galleries, Queer Thoughts and Feature Inc, both of which eventually moved to New York and have since closed.\u00a0(Hans Goodrich is not in any of May\u2019s New York fairs but did participate in both Barely Fair and Neighbors last month in Chicago, and will be at Basel Social Club in Switzerland next month.)<\/p>\n
For some gallerists, New York is not just a reliable source of buyers, but foundational to their identity. \u201cCall it \u2018Manhattan syndrome\u2019, but New York forms the core of our project,\u201d says Alexander Fleming, who co-founded Ulrik gallery in 2021. It is making its debut in Frieze\u2019s Focus sector with works from the estate of Bettina, priced from $6,000 to $40,000. A longtime resident of the hallowed Hotel Chelsea, Bettina died in 2021, leaving behind a vast archive of unexhibited work, despite much of her early art being lost to a fire in 1966. Ulrik began working with the estate in 2023 and is its sole commercial representative.<\/p>\n
On the stand are Bettina\u2019s geometric tapestries; small, modular wooden sculptures; and black-and-white photographs from her\u00a0Phenomenological New York series, which uses the city\u2019s vertiginous architecture as a tool of abstraction. Two of these photographs were acquired on Frieze\u2019s opening day by the Brooklyn Museum.<\/p>\n
Ulrik is not the only young gallery mining the past in response to a precarious present. A growing number of fledgling dealerships now work with artists\u2019 estates: Gordon Robichaux represents the estate of Jenni Crain, while Ortuzar, exhibiting in Frieze\u2019s main section, works with the estates of Ernie Barnes (in collaboration with Andrew Kreps Gallery) and Anita Steckel. While qualifying that the gallery\u2019s archival focus stems from \u201cscholarly interests rather than commercial ones\u201d, Fleming adds that \u201cit is easier to tell a story to a collector of a practice that has developed, rather than one that is a shifting target\u201d.<\/p>\n
Like many of its peers, Ulrik situates its younger artists with older or dead ones to generate cross-generational discourse. This also provides useful context for a moment in which New York\u2019s cultural future is being put to a referendum. The economic realities for the city\u2019s artists have shifted, but so have their expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the 1970s, even with its cheaper rents, artists lived on the line,\u201d Fleming says. He cites an interview given by Bettina in which she told an acquaintance that she survived by eating only \u201can onion and bread\u201d and routinely slept in a chair in her hallway because her home studio was too full of works. Under such circumstances, then as now, it is not entirely surprising many of the city\u2019s artists contemplate leaving New York\u2014but do not expect their dealers to follow anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few art-historical moments are eulogised quite like New York\u2019s Downtown scene in the 1970s and 80s. At Frieze…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":961020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,68838,4022,77,267536,4447,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-961019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-commercial-galleries","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-frieze-new-york-2026","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116577302480853246","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/961020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}