Installation view: Sterling Ruby’s “Atropa” at Sprüth Magers in New York. Photo: Genevieve Hanson
American artist Sterling Ruby has long engaged not only with the chaotic condition of our human present but also, more broadly, with that primordial chaos from which everything originates. His work engages with entropy, expressed both through physical and organic decay and as a social, psychological and institutional condition. Ruby has consistently embraced abrasion, erosion and chance in his artmaking, allowing images and forms to emerge through processes that follow or evoke the organic evolution of matter itself.
This fundamental dimension of his practice is particularly evident in “Atropa,” his latest exhibition at Sprüth Magers in New York, which presents a new body of work shaped by his ongoing engagement with transformation, fragility and dissolution. Drawing its title from Atropos, the Greek Fate who cuts the thread of life, the show places vegetal life at its center, reflecting on the paradoxes it embodies. Plants exist in a state of constant tension: delicate yet resilient, parasitic yet generative and often lethally toxic yet medicinally valuable. Their existence unfolds at the convergence of destruction and restoration, at least from a human perspective, revealing the inseparability of decay and renewal.
“The idea of entropy is a good way to describe what I’m trying to do with the work,” Ruby told Observer shortly after the exhibition’s opening. “I keep attempting to construct that in-between space: I want the art to represent that tension between expression and repression, law and lawlessness, reality and fantasy, and of course the industrial and the natural.”
Sterling Ruby. Courtesy Sterling Ruby Studio
It is within this liminal terrain, between human and nature, construction and collapse, that Ruby locates his practice. For him, the most generative space is not stability but instability: the indefinable zone where collapse becomes inevitable and transformation begins. His new body of work embraces an even more fluid conception of matter, shaped by forces and energies that remain only partially visible. The works on paper, which span graphite drawings, pen-and-ink gestures and expressive watercolor collages, depict flora in various states of emergence and dissolution. They feel at once delicate and raw, like traces of a direct and unmediated exchange between mind, hand and material that arises equally from memory, imagination and embodied experience.
The origin of these works lies in a flower garden Ruby began cultivating in his studio years ago. Nurturing a space of botanical life within an industrial architecture exposed the fragile and improbable possibility of coexistence between organic and constructed environments. “As things grew, died off and grew back again, it became something I observed constantly while working,” he recalled. “It reminded me of the history of symbolism in still life and of memento mori—remember you must die…”
Located in Vernon, an industrial zone outside downtown Los Angeles, Ruby’s studio exists in a landscape defined by heavy manufacturing and environmental contamination. “Yet here I am, with this garden that has attracted bees, hummingbirds, finches, butterflies,” he said. Over time, it evolved into an ecosystem, and with the addition of water and food sources, even coyotes and hawks began to appear. “It feels like the studio is a place of transformation, not only for me as an artist, but for all of these other living things. It is inspiring to think of it as a habitat.”
Over time, Ruby’s studio has become a habitat not only for artistic production but also for other living forms. Courtesy Sterling Ruby Studio
While his works on paper are largely drawn from memory, Ruby often incorporates photographic documentation into his collages, as well as dried flowers that he scans or translates into cyanotypes, collaborating directly with natural processes and allowing matter itself to participate in image-making. In SPLITTING (2025), the fluid distortion of these monochromatic collaged images of nature evokes the endless cycle of natural transformation, a continuous metamorphosis into new states as part of a vital and necessary process. Flowers and the vitality of vegetal life are suggested in delicate watercolors, where stains unfold into blooming fields of energy, like buds emerging from winter dormancy to renew the landscape.
The bronze sculptures represent perhaps the most lyrical articulation of this inquiry. Installed within the intimate domestic architecture of the townhouse, they appear less as monumental objects than as spectral residues, ghostly relics that quietly evoke mortality and impermanence. Each originates from a living flower cultivated in his studio garden, cut, dried and directly cast in bronze through a process that borders on the alchemical. The burnout stage incinerates the organic matter entirely, leaving behind what Ruby describes as “a bronze ghost of the original.” In this transformation, from living specimen to ash to enduring metal, the subject is not annihilated but transformed into another order of being. “The bronze flowers feel the most delicate and raw to me; it’s like the process of cremation.” The geometric bars, gates and funnels function as conduits through which molten bronze enters the flower, infiltrating its structure before solidifying. “What I’m left with, if the cast survives and the detail remains true, is this object that’s organic and fragile, like a memorial being held up by an armature.”
While earlier in his oeuvre Ruby’s practice extended toward broader institutional and societal critique, confronting the structural violence, alienation and systemic “ugliness” embedded in American life, “Atropa” feels more intimate. It is a deeper meditation on his own position as a time-bound, earth-bound entity existing within larger cycles of gestation, decay and transformation.
Across drawing, collage and sculpture, Ruby allows organic processes to shape form, positioning matter itself as an active collaborator in image-making. Photo: Genevieve Hanson
After more than 20 years of art-making, Ruby’s relationship to his work has changed. “Everything tends to be more elegiac now,” he said, reflecting on how his practice has become quieter and more introspective. “The notion of truth—whether constitutional, scientific or data-driven—has ceased to be a stable marker by which fundamental rights and sovereignty are upheld. In the past, I needed to project the ugliness of America onto the work to expose the oppression, alienation and violence that this country conceals. But now I can’t imagine what I would do to mirror the everyday distress and ongoing hatred that is so unmistakable.”
Instead, he seeks to create work that responds to the present condition without becoming didactic: “I want my work to respond to the world at large, to the human condition, to time itself, without prescribing meaning. I don’t believe these things are simple—they are complex and abstract.” Yet he remains convinced that art still offers something distinct from political discourse, a different kind of truth, one that operates through metaphor, sensation and form. “That’s my dilemma,” he said. “What does that look like? How do I make something sincere, abstract, or almost spiritual that can capture the time in which we are living?”
Ruby’s latest works articulate a quiet but profound reflection on mortality and the evolving condition of being. Genevieve Hanson
Items from Isvy’s collection in his apartment in Paris’s 16th Arrondissement. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy
A new generation of collectors is determined to take control and rewrite the rules of an art system they don’t identify with, finding its hierarchies outdated and its codes sluggish compared to the speed at which they now share information, discover artists and shape their own passions. During a frenetic Paris Art Week, Parisian collector Raphaël Isvy opened his collection to Observer, reflecting candidly on what no longer works in the traditional art world and how things could evolve—much as other markets already have.
Isvy picks us up from the opening of Paris Internationale on his motorcycle—the only sensible way to cut through the week’s gridlocked traffic—and takes us to his apartment in the elegant 16th arrondissement, directly across the river from the Tour d’Eiffel, where his two young daughters greet us at the door. Between the roar of the ride and the quiet of home, he begins not with art but with life: how becoming a father reshaped everything—his outlook, his sense of time and his focus on what truly holds value behind the mirror.
Born in 1989 and raised in Paris, Raphaël Isvy studied mathematics and statistics, worked in finance and asset management and later consulted for major tech firms. He followed the path laid out by family and convention before discovering art—a revelation that slowly but completely redirected his life toward his passion. He began collecting around 2016 and didn’t know much about art, beyond living in a city surrounded by it. “I didn’t grow up in an art-oriented family—everyone around me was a doctor, either a dentist or an eye doctor—I was the only one who ended up working in finance. I’d studied mathematics and statistics, but I had always been very curious by nature,” Isvy tells me. Curiosity is often enough to start someone down the collecting path, but he was also becoming bored with straight finance. “I loved the idea of owning something that others had tried—and failed—to get. I was drawn to the fact that art could be bought online, and I was good at that. I was fast, quicker than most people.”
That’s how Isvy ended up buying an Invader print. “When it arrived and I saw it at home, I completely changed my mind about selling it, even though I was getting crazy offers,” he says. It was an early Invader, but there was already a strong market for his work—though at vastly different price levels than today, when unique mosaics (his large “alias” works, one-offs or very limited editions) sell for hundreds of thousands of euros (one piece recently sold for about €480,000) and at auction for as much as US$1.2 million, while prints now trade in the thousands rather than the hundreds Isvy paid at the time.
Raphaël Isvy. From Instagram @raph_is, Courtesy Raphaël Isvy
What first hooked him was the thrill of opening the tube. “Putting on the white gloves, seeing the number, realizing that this specific number was mine and no one else’s and then framing it,” he recounts. “I even went down the rabbit hole of reading forums about how best to frame it flat. That’s when I realized I was in love with the whole process.”
Isvy freely admits he began collecting art with little knowledge of the Old Masters or anything related to deceased artists. “I’m lucky to live in a city where there’s everything, but I really didn’t know much at all,” he says. Instead, he represents the new generation of collectors identified in the latest Art Basel and UBS report—those who educate themselves and gather information primarily online through forums and social media.
“I taught myself—from Instagram, collectors’ accounts, Facebook groups, forums, whatever was available back then,” Isvy explains. “It all started with buying prints and hanging them on my walls, but when people came over and started talking about the pieces—debating them, arguing whether they were too simple, saying things like ‘my kid could do that’—I realized that was exactly what I loved about art: it sparked conversation.”
From there, Isvy began buying more prints and drawings, learning everything he could online and relying on the only tool he truly trusts—his eyes. “At some point I thought, okay, my wallet can do better than this,” he says as we sit in his living room, where the walls showcase the results of his less-than-decade-long collecting journey: above the fireplace hangs a work on paper by George Condo, paired with a sculpture by Sterling Ruby and a painting by Naotaka Hiro. On the floor, smaller works by once-emerging artists now internationally recognized, such as Sara Anstaiss and Brice Guilbert, sit alongside pieces by established figures like Peter Saul. Hanging in the entryway above a Pierre Paulin sofa is a blue neon by Tracey Emin that reads “Trust Yourself”—a phrase that neatly sums up Isvy’s path into art.
Greeting us at the entrance are a Tomoo Gokita painting and a hanging sculpture by Hugh Hayden, while elegantly nestled between books in the dining room’s library are smaller gems by rising painters who have quickly gained attention—from an early Eva Pahde (who just opened her debut solo at Thaddaeus Ropac in London) to Adam Alessi, Robert Zehnder, Elsa Rouy, Jean Nipon and Alex Foxton. Even the rooms of his two daughters hold small contemporary treasures, including a painting by Tomokazu Matsuyama and a drawing by Javier Calleja, while beside the couple’s bed stands an elegant surrealist figure—a woman with an octopus on her back by Emily Mae Smith.
Isvy exemplifies that ways younger collectors today are determined to claim agency and rewrite the rules of an art system they no longer identify with. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy
Before turning to art, Isvy had already collected sneakers and Pokémon cards, though never on a large scale. When he began collecting art, he approached it with a similarly modest budget. “I used to find artists selling directly from their studios, offering small drawings for $500 or $600,” he recalls. One of his first paintings was by mike lee, purchased from Arsham/Fieg Gallery (AFG)—a small gallery on the second floor of the Kith store at 337 Lafayette Street in New York. Opened in 2021 as a collaboration between Ronnie Fieg and artist Daniel Arsham, AFG was a natural extension of Fieg’s brand and its crossover between fashion, design and art—a combination that perfectly matched the taste of Isvy’s generation. “When it arrived—with the crate, the white gloves and the realization that it was a one-of-one—it completely shifted my perspective. I thought: Okay, I want to do this forever.”
Collecting in a community and growing with it
From that moment, Isvy began connecting with more people. “I think that’s what really defines me and the way I’ve been collecting. I’m someone who connects,” he says. “I talk to everyone the same way, I react to stories, ask questions and exchange views. Because in the art world, if you’re alone, you’re nothing. Without perspective, without taste, without access—even if you’re a billionaire—you’re still nothing without people.”
Convinced that community was essential to both access and understanding, he created a Facebook group devoted to prints and drawings. It became a space for collectors to share advice on buying, selling, framing and promoting new releases and studio drops. Over time, it evolved into a global network that brought people together both online and offline.
“People began organizing meetups in different cities and I remember traveling to Los Angeles to meet fifty collectors, then to New York to meet a hundred and later to Asia to meet hundreds more,” Isvy recalls. His story underscores a growing need for connection and dialogue among young collectors—a desire for shared discovery that drives collectible cultures popular with Gen Z and Millennials but is too often constrained by the rigid hierarchies of the traditional art world. The community he built around him includes collectors aged 18 to 35 who neither identify with nor seek to conform to those old rules. From there, the network grew organically—one introduction leading to another—spanning continents and forming a parallel ecosystem of its own.
Immersed in this community, Isvy began hearing about artists before they reached broader recognition. “When both Asian and American collectors were mentioning the same names, I knew it was a signal worth paying attention to,” he says. Those insights, combined with his instinct, led him to make early acquisitions that proved remarkably prescient: a large Robert Nava painting bought for $9,000 before gallery representation; an Anna Park piece purchased while she was still an undergraduate for $900; and an Anna Weyant work acquired at NADA in 2019 for $3,000. “People often say I got lucky—but it wasn’t luck. I did my homework. I have a process and I’m meticulous about it.”
Isvy’s story reveals the deep need for connection, community and shared discovery that drives a new generation of collectors. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy
When Isvy buys art, it’s never entirely spontaneous—he reads, researches and cross-checks everything. “We see about twenty new artists a day now and most are talented—but the real challenge is spotting the exceptional ones, the ones who will last,” he notes. As seasoned collectors know, that requires more than recognizing talent; it’s about identifying the right combination: an artist with originality, supported by the right gallery, at the right moment. “Those indicators are hard to find, but they form your own recipe—your personal algorithm. That’s what drives me. It’s not luck; it’s preparation meeting opportunity.”
Collecting with a purpose
For Isvy, his goal as a collector soon became clear: to own remarkable works. He first drew inspiration from older collectors—the kind he saw in books, magazines and on Instagram—showcasing homes filled with art. “When you start collecting, you get obsessed with the books, the magazines, the collectors you see online,” he says, explaining that what fascinated him was how art, furniture and architecture could merge to form a complete aesthetic statement. “It’s not about showing off; it’s about assembling design furniture, an apartment and artworks in a way that feels balanced. It’s actually really hard.” But that, he says, is what defines true taste. “You can be a billionaire and still ruin everything with bad lighting or the wrong couch. That’s why I wanted white walls, simplicity, space for the works to breathe.”
Although his collection now includes more than a hundred works (some co-owned with friends) the display in his apartment feels cohesive, with the art integrated naturally into the space, in dialogue with both furniture and architecture. To achieve this, Isvy collaborated with architect Sophie Dries, a close friend, who designed the interiors around the collection rather than the other way around, ensuring it remained a home first—a place where his daughters could live and move freely. The result preserves the apartment’s historic Haussmannian details while infusing it with the lightness and understated elegance of contemporary design.
Over time, Isvy also began selling some works—but always within his community and with full transparency. “The one rule I’ve stuck to is reaching out to the gallery first. Most of the time, when they couldn’t help me resell, I would wait or find a responsible way to do it,” he explains, showing he understands the rules of the game. He recalls one case involving a painting by Anna Weyant that he bought at NADA in 2019 for $3,500. Two years later, as her market soared, he received offers as high as $400,000 from collectors in Korea. Out of loyalty to the artist and her gallerist, he refused to sell privately. “It was still my early years collecting and I was terrified of being canceled,” he recounts. He asked 56 Henry, where he had purchased the piece, to handle the resale, but they couldn’t, as Weyant had since joined Gagosian. He then consigned it to the mega-gallery, which held it for six months without success. “Later I learned they’d doubled the price—asking nearly $400,000 without even showing it properly. Of course it didn’t sell. They never even brought me an offer. They didn’t care; they had other inventory to push.” He eventually took it to auction because the offer was life-changing. Still, this decision caused backlash with the artist, despite the fact that he had followed every protocol.
Isvy is openly critical of how written and unwritten rules often constrain the healthy circulation of art and value in the market. “The art world is an economic cycle like any other asset class. If you want it to stay healthy, you can’t break the links. Every time I sold an artwork, it was to buy another one to keep the cycle moving,” he explains. “When collectors reinject liquidity into the market, it benefits everyone. Instead of shaming people for selling, galleries should teach them how to do it properly, how to reinvest in a way that sustains the ecosystem.”
The aesthetics of living and collecting converge; here, home becomes both gallery and manifesto of a taste grounded in balance and restraint. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy
Isvy believes when a collector consigns a work back to a gallery—choosing to avoid auction and protect the artist’s market—the gallery should reciprocate that gesture. Offering trade-in credit or discounts toward another piece, for instance, would help sustain mutual trust. “That’s how you build trust and keep the wheel turning,” he says.
For him, the cause of today’s stagnation is clear. Between 2019 and 2022, everyone was buying, often under restrictive three-year no-resale agreements, and collectors were afraid to act. No one wanted to break those rules, even as the market overheated. “The fear came not from greed, but from the culture of silence that galleries built around selling,” he notes. Now that those agreements have expired, the market is flooded with works—and many aren’t good. “Galleries were taking everything out of studios instead of curating and showing only what was great. During that period, there was no real filter—no accountability. There was too much abundance,” he says. Even when artists asked galleries not to show weaker works or to limit annual price increases to no more than 10 percent, few listened. “Everyone got greedy. Collectors, galleries, artists—we all played a part in pushing things too far. That’s why the market looks the way it does now.”
When asked if this disillusionment has dulled his enthusiasm, Isvy admits that some of the magic has faded. “When you see how things really work behind the scenes, it’s not as enchanting as you once thought. It’s not disgusting, but it changes your perspective.”
Still, surrounded by art in every corner of his home, he insists the passion remains. He’s simply more deliberate now—more thoughtful and selective. “I still love the emotion of collecting, that instinctive excitement,” he says. “But now I feel like my role is to help others see what needs to change—to make the system better. I have hope because there’s a new generation that wants to do things differently. When the old dinosaurs are gone, we’ll finally have a chance to rebuild.”
Isvy’s role in rewriting the rules
Raphaël Isvy represents a new generation of collectors determined to claim agency by reshaping the system from within. Like many millennials, he sees his role in the art world as deliberately fluid—collector, curator, advisor and connector all at once. “I do deals, I buy, I sell, I help people collect, I introduce them to artists,” he explains. For him, those boundaries are artificial. “In the past, collectors were patrons; today, we can be activators,” he says, recalling how last year he curated a large cultural exhibition in the South of France, set in a vineyard, which received an enthusiastic response. He insists he doesn’t fit neatly into any single label. “I don’t have a defined role. I just love art and people.” Yet, he admits, the traditional art world resists those who refuse to stay in one box. “The truth is, the more dynamic you are, the more everyone benefits; more activity means more liquidity, more buyers, more fairs, more growth.”
For Isvy, even the distortions that have plagued the market reveal that the system’s old rules no longer fit its global scale and speed. With production volumes far exceeding what the traditional model can absorb, he argues, the only way forward is to broaden the collector base and rethink how art circulates.
He finds hope in younger galleries already experimenting with new models. “Many organize events that have an actual purpose—not just hanging a Rothko and waiting for the wire to come through. There’s a sense of responsibility and intent that wasn’t there before.”
If given the chance to introduce concrete reforms, Isvy says he would start with enforceable rules—beginning with banning auction houses from selling works less than three years old. “This rule alone would already make a huge difference,” he argues. “It would bring more stability, discourage speculation and give artists time to grow before being thrown into the market machine.”
In his view, part of the market’s instability stems from its lack of structure and accountability. Auction houses should face stricter limits—fewer sales per year, fewer lots per sale—to prevent oversaturation. Similarly, mega-galleries should adopt principles borrowed from finance, employing in-house risk managers responsible for ensuring artists are paid consistently and reserves are properly maintained. “Setting aside around 30 percent of income for operational stability, salaries and artist payments would bring the professionalism this sector urgently needs,” he explains. These are not radical reforms, he adds, but necessary corrections.
Liquidity, transparency and dialogue are emerging as the values that sustain—not threaten—the collecting ecosystem’s future. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy
At the same time, transparency remains the art market’s greatest weakness. Coming from a background in risk management, Isvy has seen firsthand how chaos unfolds when an unregulated system operates without rules. He recalls helping a friend sell a large painting that set a world record at Christie’s last October. “Everyone was celebrating, talking about millions of euros. What people don’t know is that the work wasn’t paid for in the end. There’s a huge lack of transparency in this market. No one realizes how many auction sales actually fall through, or how many so-called records are never settled,” he says.
While auction data are theoretically the only public numbers the market can rely on, prices are often published without verification and used as benchmarks even when deals collapse. “That work eventually sold for a third of the supposed record price—but in the meantime, that inflated figure distorted the entire market,” Isvy notes. To him, as a former finance professional, the outcome is predictable. “Without a serious purge and some structural reforms, I don’t see how the market can restart.”
He often describes the art market as “an ocean dominated by predators.” “Dealers are the sharks; collectors are the fish,” he says. “It’s almost impossible to navigate without getting eaten along the way. You get layers of intermediaries adding price on top of price and I’ll sometimes get three different offers for the same work, each one higher because it’s passed through multiple hands. It’s absurd. I’ve even had people steal images from my Instagram to pretend they’re selling my pieces.”
Yet he doesn’t exempt anyone from blame. “We can’t really complain about the market’s current state—we all knew what was happening. But what’s different now is that younger collectors aren’t coming in blind. They research, they cross-check and they know the system before they buy. The old guard was drawn by instinct; they lived in a smaller art world, with a handful of galleries and fairs. For us, information is everywhere—and that changes everything.”
A more fluid idea of contemporary culture
For Isvy, the solution begins with greater liquidity and openness. The art market, he argues, must operate as fluidly as other collectible markets, because the old formula of engineered scarcity and opaque pricing—supercharged during the pandemic—has eroded trust.
He compares the art world to the Pokémon card market, where transparency and liquidity keep everything in motion. “In that world, inventory changes hands every day. Payments can be made through crypto, PayPal, cash or trades—it’s fluid. People post story sales on Instagram, with clear prices and everything sells in minutes,” he explains. “Imagine trying that with art—everyone would freak out, say you’re breaking the rules. But it would work.”
For Isvy, this kind of openness could reinvigorate the entire ecosystem. “If someone sells a $3,000 work, that person will probably reinvest that money in another artist. The wheel keeps turning. Liquidity creates opportunity—for collectors, for dealers and for artists who can produce new work. That’s how you sustain an ecosystem, not by freezing it.”
When Isvy brings up this comparison, he leads us to what he calls his “little secret”—a private room that reveals another side of his personality. “The world knows me as a collector, but there’s another part of me. I’m a gamer, a geek. I collect Pokémon cards, NFTs and sneakers. I play PlayStation 5 every night. I love Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Final Fantasy. I couldn’t imagine my home without that side of who I am.”
When he moved in, he told his designer he needed an office for remote work but also a personal space. Since her aesthetic was more classic, his architect introduced him to a younger, eccentric designer known for creating gaming and YouTuber rooms. “He had orange diamonds on his teeth,” Isvy laughs. “I told him my story and we figured out how to make a small space work as both an office and a world of my own.” Together, they designed the room from scratch. “He called it The Glitch—like a bug in a video game—because it doesn’t fit with the rest of the apartment.”
The art market’s rigidity contrasts with the fluid economies that younger collectors are familiar with from gaming paraphernalia, sneakers and cryptocurrency. Courtesy Raphaël Isvy
Inside, the space feels like a cross between a gaming den and a cabinet of curiosities. There’s a retro bench upholstered in tapestry, a BS Invader console, manga shelves, Pokémon cards, Rubik’s cubes and a miniature painting by Robert Nava—his favorite artist. The walls are covered in wallpaper that mimics the black-and-white static of an old television screen, paired with ceramic terrazzo tiles forming a custom mosaic floor. “It’s vintage, weird and perfect,” Isvy says.
This hidden office and private room capture the spirit of an entire generation of collectors like Isvy—for whom contemporary art, Pokémon cards, anime and manga, video games and collectible figurines coexist within the same cultural imagination. It’s the universe that shaped their childhood and, ultimately, their identity. For this generation, these objects are not mere toys or décor but artifacts that equally express contemporary culture and their idea of collecting and supporting it.
For Isvy, the space is more than an ode to nostalgia—it’s a statement. “The contemporary art world still struggles to accept that someone can collect a Condo and also Pokémon cards,” he says. “But that’s going to change. Our generation grew up with gaming and pop culture; it’s part of us. You can’t tell people to shut off that side of themselves. That’s how the next generation of collectors will come in—through openness, not hierarchy.” Gesturing toward the Nava painting behind him, he adds, “If I cared only about money, I would have sold it—I’ve had offers. But I paid $9,000 for it and to me, it’s priceless. He’s one of the most important artists of our generation. This room reminds me why I started collecting in the first place.”
Paintings from Sterling Ruby’s TURBINE series presented by Gagosian. Casey Kelbaugh
Frieze New York has arrived with all its “I’m the art fair” glory. Expect long, awkward lineups snaking around poorly placed escalators and a general three-story mall vibe. I hate to say it, but it’s much easier to peruse art in a venue like the Javits Center because there’s just so much more space. Here, too many galleries are packed across three floors, and even getting through the double doors can be a squeeze.
But this May art fair does offer up a much-needed splash of color for spring—mainly in the form of sparkles galore, iridescent Plexiglas and gradients that seem perfectly aligned with our screen-based lives (even the offline feels online). Led by director Christine Messineo, this Frieze edition features displays from more than sixty galleries, along with solo booths featuring Alex Katz (paintings of trunks and branches), Sterling Ruby (splatters of muddy, manpower colors) and childlike paintings by Hiroshi Sugito, among others.
A series of new paintings by Alex Katz. Casey Kelbaugh
My favorites are those colorful and unpretentious works that speak to the fact that spring has finally sprung in the city. That includes untitled paintings from 2024 by Chris Martin (not the singer of Coldplay, but the New York-based artist) with Anton Kern Gallery, filled with sequins and glitter. More of the artist’s glitter-infused paintings are on view at David Kordansky Gallery’s booth, where Martin shows some of his latest pieces like Morpheus and Magenta Burst. Honestly, this is the only part of Frieze that feels like a party. The rest is comfortably numb, and even corporate, but Martin brings a breath of fresh air, and I’m grateful for that.
Another highlight is the glossy abstract paintings by Hasani Sahlehe, which are on view at both the Canada Gallery booth and at Tif Sigfrids, a gallery from Athens. Clearly a rising star, broad swaths of color are brought together in a poetic way that doesn’t feel like it’s imitating anything else with its own brushstroke.
Glossy abstracts by Hasani Sahlehe. Casey Kelbaugh
Sleek, glossy abstraction continues in the Matthew Marks Gallery booth, which has a painting called The Dreaming (2023) by Gary Hume. It’s enamel paint on aluminum, and technically has a few animal figures in the piece, but still represents a type of abstraction we’re seeing more of. It’s also very anti-1990s, as we’re in a time of FaceTune, glossing over details with the swipe of a finger.
Everything is clean and flawless, not only our selfies, but in art, too. That cleaned-up vibe can be found in the illustrative pieces by Matthew Brannon at Milan’s Gio Marconi booth. His silkscreen Reassuringly Expensive creates a montage for modern luxury, something that has become a mirage for the money-hungry on Instagram. It’s done elegantly, though, through the window of an airplane seat, surrounded by luxury objects.
‘Foam SB 103/17p’ by Tomas Saraceno. Casey Kelbaugh
Iridescent hues are a lasting trend, especially in sculpture. Tanya Bonakdar Gallery has Foam SB 103/17p, a hanging geometric sculpture by Tomas Saraceno made of steel and iridescent Plexiglas. Apparently, it ties into climate change, but it also just looks cool. Speaking of optical illusions, the gallery also has Olafur Eliasson’s The Dewdrop Agora, a 2024 sculpture of glass spheres and 24-karat gold leaf, which is part of the artist’s “exploration of optical devices, mirrors and lenses.”
Carpets are in. Tina Kim Gallery has Seoul artist Suki Seokyeong Kang’s carpet-made wall piece Day #24-75, made of dyed wool and thread on a wooden frame. It’s so rare for an artist to be able to pull off such a domestic material, but Kang has given an old medium new meaning. Meanwhile, a set of gradient paintings by Rob Pruitt—A Month Of Sunsets (February 2024)—is on view at Massimodecarlo gallery, tapping into our need for the fresh, and almost, the empty.
But the third floor is worth avoiding altogether. The “Partner Activations” likely funded the fair but feel like too much of an exercise in logos and branding. And sadly, that’s the direction things are going overall. I expected more from the Focus presentations, too, which felt predictable and not very cutting edge.
Choosing the safe route—i.e., what will sell—instead of what is fresh feels very 2024. This year’s edition of Frieze New York proves we are indeed in a recession, and that the arts aren’t exempt from snipped budgets and a real thirst for sales. Overall, it’s risk-averse, though there were those gallerists who took a risk on what truly stands out and cuts through the noise. Hopefully things will change soon, but until they do, consider this yet another example of what it takes to keep art alive in hazy, uncertain times.
Frieze New York 2024 runs through May 5 at The Shed.
