The European Tremendous Artwork Honest’s (TEFAF) fame for being on the prime of the posh spectrum lent it the air of a frenzied spring purchasing spree on Thursday afternoon in New York Metropolis. Beneath bobbing strings of purple alliums, VIPs strode by the Park Avenue Armory previewing artwork, design, jewellery, and antiquities from 91 galleries and sellers, dodging the metallic buckets of wandering oyster shuckers as one would possibly a fragrance kiosk spritz at a mall.
Since 1988, TEFAF Maastricht has exhibited “7,000 years of art history” within the Netherlands. Organizers introduced the honest stateside in 2016, emphasizing trendy and modern work — although the present shouldn’t be with out its Roman busts — twice a 12 months till 2020, after they pivoted to a single springtime occasion. That the New York version is usually working with the twentieth and twenty first centuries makes it simpler to skirt questions of provenance raised throughout the newest Maastricht iteration in March. Regardless of TEFAF’s makes an attempt to enhance vetting procedures, phrases like “Property of a Hong Kong Gentleman” and “Old German colonial collection” prevailed.
A view of TEFAF’s 2025 New York honest (picture Greta Rainbow/Hyperallergic)
David Gill, one in all 13 first-time exhibitors at TEFAF New York, felt a buzz within the crowd that he attributes to the time of the 12 months, even from his tucked-away perch in one of many Armory’s wood-accented, second-floor historic rooms.
“It’s like Versailles up here with all the mirrors,” Gill stated, gesturing to Jorge Pardo’s Meretricious (2015) collection of sculptural frames, all named for various artwork critics. “Some people don’t want to make the stairs to get up here. But if they do, they’ll have a beautiful surprise,” he stated, referring to the sunshine reflecting off of two Zaha Hadid “Liquid Glacial” espresso tables (2012).
Zaha Hadid’s “Liquid Glacial” espresso tables and Jorge Pardo’s Meretricious framed mirrors
It’s straightforward to wander TEFAF and picture the choices not as artwork historic wonders, however as curios to take a seat in uber-wealthy folks’s properties — particularly on the jewellery cubicles (“I just had two men come by, one from Argentina and one from Mexico, who were here looking for Mother’s Day gifts,” says Fiona Druckenmiller, founding father of New York’s FD Gallery), or when your mini-lecture on the provenance of Meret Oppenheim’s “Souvenir de ‘Déjeuner en Fourrure’” (1936/ 1972) is interrupted by an aggressive worth test on the Sol Lewitt ($80,000).
However for a weekend, why not lean into the fantasy? Solely two of those Oppenheim prototypes exist, which Galleria d’Arte Maggiore’s Alessia Calarota explains are decades-later variations of her vastly fashionable 1936 cup-and-saucer sculpture.
“The other one is owned by her granddaughter, and they’re working to open a museum house where she lived in Switzerland,” Calarota stated. This one prices $120,000, and once I ask what sort of purchaser the gallery imagines for it, she suggests, “Why not you?” (I snort.)
Meret Oppenheim’s “Memento de ‘Déjeuner en Fourrure’” and Yee Soo-kyung’s “Translated Vase_2021 TVG 6” (2021)
There’s a sense of actual optimism for this market, although. As a result of Michele di Robilant of Robilant+Voena believes the New York gathering scene is “very active and strong at the moment,” the gallery wished to deliver their finest — which meant a number of Lucio Fontanas and an enormous bubblegum-pink Andy Warhol ($4 to five million). Robilant+Voena painted the partitions of their sales space to match.
Different galleries additionally tailor-made to the TEFAF crowd. Seoul’s The Web page Gallery featured Yee Soo-kyung’s “Translated Vase_2021 TVG 6” (2021), made from ceramic shards and gold leaf that appeals to the design focus of the honest and to the present curiosity within the artist in New York. Her work is featured within the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork’s exhibition Monstrous Magnificence: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie.
Work by Anna Weyant on view at Gagosian’s sales space
Gagosian’s sales space, one of many very first on the honest’s essential ground, synthesizes the idea of luxurious and high-caliber craft. The gallery’s senior director, Andy Avini, all the time wished to work with painter Anna Weyant on an artwork honest sales space that might function her work completely. This time round, he requested with sufficient advance discover, and Weyant set about making eight works with TEFAF in thoughts: sq. jewellery bins with a cross necklace or pearl bracelet inside, typically with a red-dotted “sold” sticker ($90,000 every), and a bigger portray of a bouquet in her of her signature haunting model ($300,000). Inside two hours of the honest, all eight had offered, the gallery stated in a gross sales report.
Avini and Weyant collaborated on the sales space’s pastel wall coloration, carpet, and furnishings. “I wanted [the booth] to look like it fit in this fair perfectly,” Avini stated. “Being up front, next to the jewelry; the scale of the works and the scale of the booth really working together … It’s special. It makes you think outside of the box a little bit.”
Avini added, “Sometimes the market makes you fit into a square,” and the gallery’s a lot much less tasteful show of Jeff Koons’s Unbelievable Hulk (2004–18) sculptures, concurrently on view at Frieze, got here into my thoughts. “I like to break out of that.”
