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The Independent Art Fair has been the victim of numerous Breakout star in New York over the years, from the Fête du painter figurative Nicolas Pastels to Deborah Joyce-Hollman, whose nine-hour film “Moment 2” was recently acquired by the Guggenheim Museum. In 2012, the influential museum collectors and founders of Miami Don and Mera Rubell I discovered the paintings and the pieces of sculptural walls by relatively unknown here, the Colombian artist Oscar Murillo. In a few days, the couple arranged to meet Murillo: a five -week summer residence at the Rubell Family Collection and a first solo exhibition in American museum in Miami quickly followed.
“Last year, for our 15th anniversary, we examined an in -depth look at the number of American and international artists made their first solo presentation at Independent, either as an American beginnings, or as debut in New York,” explains Elizabeth Dee, founder and manager of the Fair curatorial. Retrospection has given more than 300 names. “It was such a large list of artists who have become substantial, in terms of representation of the museum and the market,” she adds.
For the independent edition in 2025, which was held at the Tribeca spring studios, Dee and his team began to organize the event which attracts galleries of initiates and medium size as they have always done, by invitation and appointment only, with a sharp sense of the question of whether a solo artist has already had a New York moment. But this time, the fair is launching a new program called Independent beginningswhich includes 26 solo presentations in the larger platform. To qualify, artists should not have more than one non-Fair solo show in New York. “We did not want to exclude the artists, by default, because they may have a little show in a pop-up somewhere or a show during COVID that five people saw,” explains Dee.
Spreads in the 85 participating galleries of the fair, Independent beginnings is the result of close observation and months of collaborative conversations. “We have artists who are extraordinarily established in their country of origin, but for various reasons, we have not yet had the opportunity to show in New York,” she said. “There is a whole next generation of artists who present themselves at this fair.”
This week, Independent beginnings Decouring this new harvest of world talents, from Tokyo and Addis Abeba to Berlin, Bucharest and Bologna. Paintre de Stockholm Gunnel Wåhlstrand – a “national treasure in his country of origin”, explains Dee – is presented by the gallery based in Stockholm and Paris Andréhn -Schiptjenko. Wåhlstrand works exclusively in a subtle tonal, ink washing, evoking the Swedish island of its childhood summers. Witness of meticulous intentionality, the artist only made 50 works of art during his 25 -year career, presenting three paintings at the fair. Independent beginnings is his first solo outing in the United States.
“This is what makes us very different from the traditional places of the fair landscape,” explains Dee. “Because we are based on appointment, we are very high with each gallery and their artist on the selection and placement of spaces.” Wåhlstrand has precisely selected the site on the sixth floor of the spring studios that she wanted her work to be seen, the exact wall lengths for her pieces to hang and the color of the wall – “all the huge considerations for the artist”.
Independent beginnings The artist Nicole Economides is presented by the gallery of Athens Callirrhoe, a first exhibitor at the Fair. While the savings lives in New York, it will be his first solo presentation there. To mark a “link between conceptual art in New York and this painting practice which could easily be in dialogue with Kelley Walker”, connecting the young artist in the early 2000s by the New York icon. The savings evoke the experience of immigrants from his family – owning a Greek restaurant – in some of his works: cheese and olive oil barrels supports canvases.
“One of the trends we see among this growing generation of gallery owners and artists is decentralization outside New York,” explains Dee. She indicates in April April, a gallery of Pittsburgh founded by Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi in 2021, who operated in the room before their Brooklyn apartment until 2024. Independent beginnings, They bring drawings and sculptures of the artist based in Montreal, Alix Van der Donkt-Ferrand, alongside a series of artist's music boxes, playing a composite of songs, including original compositions.
For some artists, their New York moment in Independent beginnings follows a splash elsewhere in the United States. Rising British Gallery Copperfield highlights Ada M Patterson, whose silk paintings develop the tinted textiles of Barbadian that she developed for the perspective. 6 Triennial in New Orleans last winter.
As for whether Independent beginnings is a way to attract buyers to a difficult environment, Dee says: “I think that even if we have been in a market correction and there has been a lot of economic and political volatility, the field of the market that increases considerably is the lower level galleries.” She quotes last month Art Basel and UBS art market report This revealed that in 2024, dealers with a turnover of less than $ 250,000 experienced the highest increase in overall sales from one year to 17%. “We were in a transfer of massive generational wealth,” she says. “But it is also a change of generational gallery … We are trying to represent the next generation of gallery owners and artists they select from their own generations.”
May 8-11, independenthq.com
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