Art Market
Interior view of Artissima 2025. © Perottino-Piva-Castellano-Bergadano. Courtesy of Artissima.
Fall might be known as truffle season in the northern Italian region of Piedmont, but in its capital city of Turin, there is more than fungi for curious visitors to unearth this week. Until November 2nd, Artissima 2025 is hosting 176 galleries at the cavernous Oval Center, part of the wider event of Turin Art Week.
Founded in 1994, Artissima is Italy’s oldest contemporary art fair and is renowned for its focus on cutting-edge artists and galleries. While many art fairs claim to tick this box, it’s immediately clear that Artissima actually walks the walk, as visitors found out at the fair’s VIP day on Thursday, October 30th.
Across curated sections such as Present Future (focused on emerging artists), Back to the Future (rediscovery of 20th-century artists), and Disegni (contemporary design), many galleries here present tightly focused projects. They foregrounded performance, moving image, and process-based works as much as painting and sculpture, which tend to be more typical of art fairs. The variety of works on view makes it immediately clear why the fair is a favorite among curators as well as collectors, both of whom attended in abundance on VIP day.
Thomas Dane Gallery’s booth at Artissima 2025. © Perottino-Piva-Castellano-Bergadano. Courtesy of Artissima.
Among those in attendance was the eminent collector Patrizia Sandretto de Rebaudengo, a Turin native whose namesake foundation based in the city turns 30 this year. “It’s my fair not only because it is in my city, but it’s a fair that in a certain way has grown with me, with the story of my foundation, and with the story of my collection,” she said, hailing the event as a “fair of discovery.”
That view was echoed by the fair’s director, Luigi Fassi, who described Artissima as a “bridge” between the Italian and international art scenes. Galleries from some 33 countries are present at the fair, which also stands to benefit from the Italian government’s recent reduction of VAT on art sales to 5 percent, the lowest in the EU. “It’s a big chance to raise the capability of the Italian system to compete,” Fassi said.
With works across a range of media and price points—from those by emerging names to Arte Povera heavyweights—there was certainly plenty to spark inspiration. Here, Artsy selects five standout works at the fair priced under $10,000.
Presented by Galerie Les filles du calvaire
Price: €4,500 ($5,202)
Rendered on delicately textured paper, this intimate work in pigment and watercolor by Karine Rougier recalls the precision and spiritual symbolism of Indian miniature painting, a style that was a formative influence for the French artist. “I am fascinated because you can do so much on a small surface,” the artist said of the style, which emerged in the 16th-century Mughal Empire.
Parisian gallery Galerie Les filles du calvaire is presenting works on paper by the artist, who teaches at the Fine Arts School of Marseille and represented Malta at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
Ode à la curiosoté (2025) is my personal favorite from the standout display, offering beauty and mystery in equal measure. The surreal scene, set within a small, mountainous landscape, creates a theater of myth and metamorphosis. A cluster of human figures rendered in warm terracotta hues, direct their collective gaze toward a radiant sun crowned with a human face. The sky is also filled with smaller celestial bodies, each with expressive visages.
Rougier’s meticulous linework and jewel-like tones reminded me of the devotional intricacy of Mughal and Rajasthani manuscripts, yet the artist’s imagery is more dreamlike and allegorical.
Presented by Cardelli & Fontana
Price: €2,500 ($2,890)
This work at Cardelli & Fontana was my pick from a series of pint-sized paintings by Beatrice Meoni tucked into a corner of the Italian gallery’s booth.
Like much of the work by the artist on view, La nota del lupo (2025) is less about the objects depicted than the atmosphere they inhabit. The still-life painting’s warm, rusted palette of reds and browns gives the items—a figurine, ceramics, a bowl, a framed image, and books—a warm emotional charge. “The work is about the places where she works: her studio and her house,” said Massimo Biava, a director of the gallery.
Biava also noted that Meoni often depicts quiet, introspective spaces—still lifes, interiors, or solitary figures—with a tactile, almost sculptural use of paint. Through her muted tones and ambiguous forms, Meoni distills these tangible environments into something ethereal.
Presented by Monica De Cardenas
Price: €8,000 ($9,248)
A man leans toward a pair of parrots perched on metal bowls, yet his gesture (is it a kiss?) is fragmented and doubled by what seems to be a distorting mirror or lens. This fascinating photographic experiment is by Linda Fregni Nagler, who is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at Turin institution Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea.
Nagler’s practice revolves around the history, psychology, and mechanics of photography. She often—as in the case of this work—collects and re-photographs archival imagery. Professional Pet-sitter Jack Sofield Trusts Mac The Macaw #2 (2023) is from the artist’s “Wonderland” series, in which she manipulates photographs from 20th-century American magazines, deforming them to explore the relationship between human beings and animals. “With a mirror, she moves this print, and then she rephotographs, and then reprints,” explained gallerist Monica De Cardenas of the artist’s technique.
The work has an almost disorienting effect, fracturing into layers and merging human and animal forms. What first appears as a simple portrait becomes a visual puzzle, and the uncanny symmetry between the two subjects invites a second look. It’s a captivating image that asks not just what we see, but how we see.
Presented by Wentrup
Price: €5,000–€7,500 ($5,780–$8,670)
Perched on the wall of Berlin gallery Wentrup’s booth, Desire Moheb-Zandi’s textile piece To grow again (2025) sprouts from the canvas it’s mounted on like a sample of living terrain. Moheb-Zandi stacks fields of cotton, botanically dyed Turkish wool, and naturally dyed French hemp, threading in upcycled Italian fibers with lengths of rope, cord, jute, and looping embroidery.
It is typical of the artist’s preoccupation with weaving as a way of thinking about rhythm, repetition, and transformation, drawing on methods rooted in her upbringing between Germany and Turkey. “She remembered these very old techniques that she learned from her grandmother, which she then incorporated or used for her own work,” explained dealer Jan Wentrup, the gallery’s co-founder.
Each layer of the work carries a distinct tactility that drew me in: a mauve crust at the top; a satin filament that snakes like circuitry; a shaggy green pelt studded with tufts; and, below, a pale, combed pool of stitches. Its contrasts—tight and loose, matte and gloss, plush and flat—are entrancing.
Presented by Luce Gallery
Price: €4,750 ($5,491)
This compact, vertically coiled ceramic sculpture by Nobuhito Nishigawara appears at first glance to be spiraling from its plinth. Built from looping ribbons of clay glazed in a soft pink, the piece rises in a spiraling form that feels at once accidental and intentional, as if it’s frozen in time. Embedded within the folds are rounded, bluish ceramic stones.
The work, mounted in the middle of Turin’s Luce Gallery, caught my eye with this controlled chaos. Nishigawara, who was born in Nagoya, Japan, and works in L.A., examines cultural identity, material transformation, and abstraction with his works, explained gallery director Nikola Cernetic. “His work is based on the memory of his life in Japan, and what it means for him and his family to transfer to L.A.,” he told Artsy.
Qualia #248 (2023) is a work that would make any surface it’s placed on feel alive. It’s a meditation on how form can emerge from disorder, suggesting both vulnerability and resilience.
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Arun Kakar
Arun Kakar is Artsy’s senior art market editor focused on explaining and unpacking the commercial art world. Before he joined Artsy in late 2022, he held staff positions at titles including the New Statesman, Spear’s Magazine, and Management Today, among others. He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of York and lives in Central London.
