15 Outstanding Artworks from the May 2025 New York Art Fairs

One week, seven art fairs. Call it a scheduling nightmare or an embarrassment of riches, this was the formidable task facing those in the New York art world this week.

What has traditionally been a fortnight of fair activity has been distilled into less than seven days this year, replete with a bevy of gallery openings and museum offerings across the Big Apple (which are covered in more detail in our guide to the whole of New York Art Week 2025). Full schedules, heavy art diets, and high step counts—such is the order of the week for art lovers in town.

Each of the seven art fairs taking place offers a different slice of the art world, from the gilded blue-chip fare of TEFAF to the bleeding-edge emerging art at NADA.

Yesterday, Artsy rounded up its 10 best booths from Frieze New York, the staple fair of the week. But it doesn’t stop there. We’ve done the hard yards to unearth some outstanding artworks at the six other fairs currently open across town: Esther II, NADA, Future Fair, TEFAF, Independent, and 1:54.

The works chosen here range from historical gems to new artist discoveries. Taken together, they represent the breadth of work on view at the art fairs—all of which are available to browse on Artsy, whether or not you’re in New York.

Here, we share 15 outstanding artworks from the 2025 New York art fairs.

Through May 10th

The New York Estonian House, 243 E 34th St

New kid on the block—or, more accurately, island—Esther returned for its second year with 25 galleries, nearly all of which are participating for the first time. The boutique alternative fair was founded last year by a pair of Estonian gallerists, Margot Samel and Olga Temnikova, and boasts a healthy Baltic contingent among its exhibitors. Fittingly, it’s held in the Beaux-Arts townhouse that houses New York’s Estonian Educational Society. To the delight of visitors, Estonian kringel was served at the VIP preview on May 6th.

Idiosyncratic installations—a delightful feature of the alternative fair format, where standard booth presentations are eschewed—are ample at Esther II. There’s art everywhere you look in the Estonian House: stashed in corners of the stairwell, hung from the ceiling, mounted on the pool table. Brandon Morris’s bulbous, stitched sculptures, shown by the Montreal gallery Pangée, are situated atop a piano, the instrument’s aura of grandeur whimsically clashing with the artworks’ haphazard forms.

Priced between $4,000 and $5,500 apiece, these works—of which Teapot (Desire for No Tomorrow) (2023) is the largest—consist of vintage metal teapots soldered together into wobbly, totem-like forms and bound by bits of leather. Through them, Morris, who is based in New York and studied fashion at Parsons School of Design, explores ideas of renewal and repair. The objects are animated through the artist’s intervention, and he adorns them in new garments, stitched by hand. They come to resemble Tim Burton characters—a bit raggedy, a touch eerie, but ultimately charming.

—Olivia Horn

Through May 11th

Starrett-Lehigh Building, 601 W 26th St

Housed across a sprawling floor of the Starrett-Lehigh Building in West Chelsea, NADA New York 2025 feels like a promising new chapter. The expansive floorplan gives the art and attendees space to breathe, creating an inviting, navigable atmosphere—which was matched by strong attendance and a sunny ambiance on its opening day.

Now in its 11th edition, NADA New York has a reputation for spotlighting emerging voices: This year’s fair, which features 120 galleries from 19 countries, offers no shortage of discoveries. Many works stood out for their inventive, high-concept use of materials, from Haleigh Nickerson’s boombox sculptures at Superposition to Charles Degeyter’s works made with taxidermied hermit crabs at Tatjana Pieters. And unsurprisingly, rising painters remain a strong suit, as seen in our selections below.

While works could be found for as little as $300, many compelling options hovered in the $1,000–$5,000 range, with few works priced above the $15,000–$20,000 range.

Danielle Fretwell’s still life paintings are both lush and cerebral, drawing viewers in with sumptuous surfaces that quietly challenge perception. Working directly from life in her studio, the artist meticulously arranges objects that nod to 17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting while referencing contemporary visual culture. In High Stems (2025), a pair of iridescent shell glasses—sourced from Etsy and popular on Instagram and at bachelorette parties—serve as a sly cultural cue. The darkness in these deftly painted works is achieved not with black paint, but through many layers of jewel-toned hues.

“She’s looking for the truth in images and how we understand and process them,” said gallerist Alice Amati, noting the artist’s response to a world oversaturated with conflicting narratives. The $5,000 painting sold—along with the entire booth—within the first hour of the fair’s VIP preview. Now 27 and based in Massachusetts, Fretwell will open a solo show in London with Alice Amati this October during Frieze Week.

—Casey Lesser

ARDEN + WHITE GALLERY, Booth C212

With her steel sculptures, Lane Walkup reimagines blacksmithing, forging steel into sinewy, elegant lines. Her works—equal parts botanical and fantastical—populate ARDEN + WHITE GALLERY’s booth like a lyrical garden. “She’s working with these very masculine materials and brings this femininity and surrealism and softness to it and makes these delicate, dancing figures,” said gallery founder and artist Cas Friese.

This piece, priced at $8,000, is the tallest of the group, reaching upward before splitting into three, its spindly stems bearing delicately drooping leaves and blooms. Its jaunty silhouette, formed from hammered lines, appears almost to sway.

Friese added that the decision to show Walkup’s work was driven in part by a desire to support the artist as she rebuilds her practice after hurricane damage to her studio in Asheville, North Carolina.

—C.L.

Chilli Art Projects, Booth B101

Reeha Lim’s Hide & Seek (Blue Hour Theater) (2024) is painted on silk, a medium that gives her work its distinctive shimmer and a dreamy aura. By painting on both sides of the fabric, Lim builds up translucent layers and shadows that shift with the viewer’s perspective, conjuring fleeting memories and imagined spaces. This piece, priced at $14,000, is inspired by her time spent away from family during the holidays and captures emotions associated with grief and longing.

“We were initially drawn to Reeha’s work because of her distinctive process—painting on silk to evoke a ghostly, ephemeral quality that perfectly echoes the presence and absence associated with being between places and histories,” said Aubrey Higgin, founder of London gallery Chilli Art Projects.

Fresh from the esteemed NXTHVN residency in New Haven, Connecticut, Lim shares the booth with fellow resident Christopher Paul Jordan; both are featured in a group show opening this week at James Cohan’s Lower East Side gallery.

—C.L.

Through May 10th

Chelsea Industrial, 535 W 28th St.

Future Fair has a reputation for being friendly—to its exhibitors, as well as to visitors and their wallets. Because it focuses on the emerging end of the art market, price points skew much lower than those found at the Friezes and TEFAFs of the world. And supporting small galleries is a clear priority: The fair is allocating 15 percent of its profits to grants for up-and-coming dealers.

Founded in 2021, Future Fair is hosting its fifth edition at the Chelsea Industrial, just a few blocks south of Frieze and around the corner from NADA. It’s an accessible entry point for new art buyers, but also a worthy destination for more experienced collectors looking to discover nascent talent.

Maybaum Gallery, Booth E8

Aiko Tezuka’s sumptuous, vibrant textile works have an almost molten visual effect. Many, including Closing and Opening: A Study of Bravery – Tangled 4 (2025), feature woven tapestries seemingly cleaved down the middle, with strands of thread hanging in drooping curves between the two halves, as if wilting. The artist, who is based between Berlin and Tokyo, reworks both vintage textiles and contemporary ones that she designs herself. Her modern designs often blend motifs both old and new, Eastern and Western. Deconstruction is the crux of Tezuka’s practice: In unraveling these tightly woven fibers, she suggests a desire to pick apart elements of modern life, revealing the structures that undergird it.

Tezuka is well established in her native Japan and in Europe: She has exhibited at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, among many others. Her exposure in the United States has, thus far, been limited, but she’s found champions in New York’s Jane Lombard Gallery and San Francisco’s Maybaum Gallery—the latter of which is showing her work in its group presentation at Future Fair. Closing and Opening: A Study of Bravery – Tangled 4 is priced at $12,000.

—O.H.

Harsh Collective, Booth U14

In The Great Wonder (In Praise of the Sky) (2025), Masha Morgunova bottles a moment of pure awe. Ominous clouds hang over the painting’s vast, grassy landscape and mountainous horizon; where they converge, a flash of red suggests a lightning storm about to strike. Two translucent, bounding figures in the foreground embody the wonder that stems from sublime natural beauty, while the skeleton opposite them appears as a reminder of nature’s relative might, and our own mortality. The work’s transcendent effect is magnified by Morgunova’s use of decorative elements—delicate, draped chains and beadwork—to draw the viewer’s eye in. It is priced at $8,000.

Born in Saint Petersburg and now based in New York, the young artist has previously exhibited in group shows at Mama Projects, Moosey, and Ross+Kramer. Her work, which encompasses painting, sculpture, and photography, draws on both highbrow references and deeply felt emotions (she’s cited both the German novelist Thomas Mann and the Romantic concept of weltschmerz, or world-weariness, as inspiration). Morgunova’s appearance in Harsh Collective’s booth is her first at a New York fair—an impressive debut.

—O.H.

Through May 11th

Spring Studios, 50 Varick St.

Since its inception in 2010, Independent New York has positioned itself as a launchpad for emerging voices. This year’s 16th edition underscores that founding principle: Among the 85 exhibitors on view, some 40 galleries are making their fair debuts and 26 artists are making their first appearance in New York. With the fair now an established pillar of May’s New York art calendar, this enduring mission is a testament to its ability to surface fresh talent while drawing sustained interest from across the market.

Unlike other fairs that silo emerging galleries into distinct sections, Independent’s layout remains democratic: Young upstarts neighbor established names, making for a dynamic fair experience. On its VIP day, the tone remained curious and conversational, mirroring the fair’s easygoing and friendly reputation.

Yancey Richardson Gallery, Booth 618

The Hollywood sign, the Twin Towers, the Statue of Liberty: These are just a few of the iconic backdrops in Tseng Kwong Chi’s “East Meets West” series of photographs from the late 1970s to the late ’80s. Wearing a zipped Zhongshan suit and sunglasses, the artist transforms into a character who is both outsider and orchestrator, using his own body to stage deadpan disruptions of American monumentality. A selection of these works is featured in Yancey Richardson Gallery’s booth at Independent, anchored by a standout: the large-scale print New York, New York (1979), in which Tseng leaps mid-air before the Brooklyn Bridge, shutter cable in hand.

His costume—part Communist uniform, part cliché—complicates ideas of identity, authorship, and self-display. New York, New York is one of the earliest and most exhilarating images in the series: serious, absurd, and bursting with youthful precision.

“What I love about New York, New York is that he’s holding the shutter release and the cable, and he’s showing you that he’s the subject and the maker of the piece at the same time,” gallery founder Yancey Richardson told Artsy. The work is an edition of nine, which are priced at $27,000 apiece.

—Maxwell Rabb

Shafei Xia’s erotic ceramics and paintings invite viewers into a pastel world where domestic life twists into something strange and psychological. Her sculpture A Dream (2025) anchors the Chinese artist’s solo presentation at P420’s booth, depicting a bloated, off-kilter interior populated by fragmented bodies and bulbous furniture. Using cartoonish proportions glazed in saccharine hues, the ceramic living room features a couple fornicating on the coffee table. A closer inspection reveals more intrigue: a scene from an erotic film painted on the miniature television and a sleeping pig on the couch.

Xia produces her ceramics in Faenza, Italy, a city known for its centuries-old clay traditions and uniquely mineral-rich sand, integral to the tactile quality of her work. Along with much of her oeuvre, this work draws on the tradition of Chinese erotic prints. Here, however, Xia shifts the perspective to place female subjectivity and interiority at its core. “There’s a lot of this in the history of China and Chinese art, but the difference mostly may be that the woman is the real protagonist,” noted Fabrizio Padovani, director and founder of P420. A Dream is priced at $25,000.

—M.R.

Jane Lombard Gallery, Booth 626

Karolina Maszkiewicz’s practice involves the gathering, drying, and cataloging of organic matter—flora collected from places including the Los Angeles National Forest and Joshua Tree in California. Each leaf and stem is carefully preserved, labeled, and arranged in her studio like scientific specimens. Her sculptural mobiles—evoking the delicately balanced forms of mid-century master Alexander Calder—emerge from this methodology. In Life is a garden (2025), wire-thin armatures extend from a textured, rock-like ceramic base, balancing dried pods and leaves in a suspended arc. The result evokes both natural growth and human curation, placing it somewhere between a seedling, a constellation, and a laboratory display.

Priced at $5,000, Life is a garden is a standout among Jane Lombard Gallery’s carefully curated eco-feminist booth, which also features works by Ilke Cop and Eva Struble. “When talking about the landscape and why we chose this work for this booth, it is that our whole booth deals with ecofeminism, and this idea: ‘Does nature exist without the intervention of women?’” said Ariel De Sal, associate director at the gallery.

—M.R.

Through May 13th

Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave.

Oysters were shucked, champagne was poured, and deals quietly unfolded as the packed VIP day of TEFAF New York opened its doors on May 8th at the Park Avenue Armory. Now in its 11th edition, the fair returns with its signature blend of blue-chip polish and vintage splendor. This year’s event brings together 91 dealers from 13 countries offering everything from Renaissance cameos to contemporary masterworks—and a few ultra-rare surprises in between.

On opening day, the venue was abuzz as art world luminaries frantically whizzed through presentations of museum-quality art jewelry, design, and antiques. Some of the most packed booths featured works such as Korean artist Kim Tschang-Yeul’s hypnotic water drop paintings at Tina Kim Gallery, to buzzy new paintings by art world A-lister Anna Weyant at Gagosian.

As always, prices were mostly on request—and often six to seven digits deep—but the fair offered no shortage of masterpieces for visitors in attendance.

Richard Saltoun, Booth 205

Tucked in a quiet corner of the Park Avenue Armory, Richard Saltoun’s booth mounted a powerful tribute to women fiber artists, with works by Magdalena Abakanowicz and Yvonne Pacanovsky Bobrowicz. But the undeniable star of the booth is Colombian artist Olga de Amaral’s Hojarasca Barbas de piedra (1973), a thick tactile expanse of handwoven wool and horsehair that drapes to depict an ambiguous geological event. Its palette, shifting from lavender to rust and ochre, evokes sediment, shadow, and light, grounding abstract form in earthly materiality. Hojarasca Barbas de piedra is priced in the range of $700,000 to $900,000.

The piece harkens back to the MoMA’s landmark 1969 textile exhibition, where de Amaral presented a massive work from her “Woven Walls” series alongside works by textile vanguardists such as Abakanowicz. More than five decades later, the artist’s long-overdue renaissance is in full bloom: a recent sweeping European retrospective at the Fondation Cartier, as well as a standout presence at the Venice Biennale, have put her back in the spotlight.

—M.R.

Friedman Benda, Booth 325

Known as “the father of art furniture” in the United States, the late Wendell Castle pioneered the use of stack lamination, a process borrowed from decoy carving that enabled unprecedented sculptural freedom in wood. This approach led Castle to create forms with sweeping curves and structural complexity, pushing furniture beyond function into the realm of fine art.

One of the earliest and most iconic examples of this innovation is Squid Chair with Table (1966), shown in the U.S. for only the second time in about six decades at Friedman Benda’s booth. Crafted from cherrywood, the piece features a fluid, asymmetrical silhouette and a trio of tentacle-like legs that curl upward from the base, giving the composition a striking, exploratory energy. This work is priced within the range of $400,000–$500,000.

Castle made only one other “Squid Chair,” which was similar in form, but without the table element. Both relate to a group of early works in which Castle experimented with serpentine forms. “At this point in his career, he was mastering this technique, which he’s come to be known for—and he would return to forms like this towards the end of his career,” said Alex Gilbert, director of Friedman Benda.

—M.R.

Leon Tovar Gallery, Booth 366

After watching Conclave—the recent Oscar-nominated film starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci that dramatizes the secretive election of a new pope—gallerist Leon Tovar decided to center Fernando Botero’s portrait of a bulbous bishop, El Nuncio (1987), in his TEFAF booth.

However, the dealer didn’t expect life to imitate art. Just weeks later, Pope Francis passed away, initiating a real-life conclave, and, on the VIP opening day of the fair, white smoke rose above the Vatican. Suddenly, Botero’s clergyman felt almost prophetic.

The figure in Botero’s painting is flanked by altar boys and nuns rendered in the Colombian artist’s signature exaggerated, voluminous style. The scene is at once absurd and reverent, capturing the pageantry of ecclesiastical power with a wink. “Botero is full of humor,” Tovar told Artsy. “If you look at the bishop, he doesn’t even touch the floor because he has a cushion [under his feet] because he doesn’t want to [touch the ground].” The price for the large-scale Botero painting was not disclosed.

—M.R.

Through May 11th

Halo, 28 Liberty St.

Taking place in the ominously titled (and tricky to Google Map) new venue The Halo, 1:54 New York this year traded Chelsea for the Financial District for its third location change in as many years. Now in its 11th New York edition, the fair continues to hew firmly to its mission of championing art from the African continent and its diaspora, as with its other fairs in London and Marrakech.

This year’s fair features 30 exhibitors from 17 countries in the airy venue, which, as the name suggests, is structured in a circular layout that may take more than a few laps for visitors to properly digest. Works by more than 70 artists are on view, spanning major names such as Kerry James Marshall and Aboudia through to emerging talents, evidenced by our selection below.

Competing with the openings of Independent and TEFAF across town, 1:54’s VIP day was nonetheless well-attended by a vibrant and energetic crowd. Works here are priced predominantly in the four-figure and low $10,000s range, but approach the upper five figures for more established artists.

Jonathan Carver Moore, Booth 12

Taking his own community as his subjects, young American artist Adrian Armstrong documents the contemporary Black experience in the U.S., making references to the history of photography, portraiture, and collage.

In the joyful triptych screen Luke 15:7 (2025) at the booth of the San Francisco gallery Jonathan Carver Moore, he portrays a group of Black people at a party, their bodies superimposed on a flat blue painted background. These figures, drawn in ballpoint pen and with humorous accessories painted on (rainbow teeth or statement sunglasses), are engrossed in dance and celebration. As the work’s title suggests, references to religion are central to this piece, from its altarpiece-inspired, three-part format, to the bible in the hands of one reveller, to a necklace featuring Jesus around the neck of another. The bible verse it references evokes God’s joy at a repentant sinner coming to faith. When the doors of the folding screen close, they reveal a collaged exterior reminiscent of stained glass.

“He usually likes to photograph Black people enjoying themselves, like at parties,” explained gallerist Jonathan Carver Moore, who discovered the artist at NXTHVN, Titus Kaphar’s artist residency in New Haven, Connecticut. He added: “This is an image he’s taken before…drawn it and collaged it. He grew up in a religious background but also loves Black people, connecting with the Church and having fun.” The work is priced at $5,000.

—Arun Kakar

Fridman Gallery, Booth 26

Meditating on diasporic identity, belonging, and homeland, Madjeen Isaac’s luscious painting Gonna Search the Sky for New Horizons to Unfold (2024) is a moving depiction of the artist’s personal history.

In the painting, Isaac, a first-generation Haitian American, depicts a hybrid landscape, superimposing jungle landscapes from Haiti with a vignette of a New York building. The work has a wistful tone: Three figures are shown stumbling through the Haiti flora, with one shining as a silhouette at the top of a mountain landscape. The New York building, meanwhile, is decorated with bubble-written graffiti reading “We Can’t Dream Alone.” Painted in response to the late 2024 U.S. travel bans to and from Haiti, the work probes at the discomfort of not being able to access one’s homeland, and how places can be reimagined through memory.

“She paints memories of landscape in Haiti, combining them with urban scapes of New York City,” said gallery director Ilya Fridman. “That creates these unique compositions of city buildings and lush vegetation, as if ancestral spirits exist simultaneously in both places.” The work is priced at $7,000.

Isaac, who has had work featured at institutions including Smack Mellon and the Brooklyn Museum, was last year’s recipient of the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.

—A.K.

Sanlé Sory, Je Vais Décoller, 1977

Yossi Milo Gallery, Booth 05