Clio Artwork Honest has been capable of keep small after greater than a decade in operation, however if you stroll into the Chelsea artwork present, it doesn’t really feel that approach.
The self-styled “anti-fair,” which returned this week for the second of its two consecutive New York Metropolis fall editions via September 21, manages to suit 35 to 40 artists within the floor ground of 511 West twenty fifth Avenue with out feeling claustrophobic.
That scale is vital for Alessandro Berni, who based the honest in 2014 to provide artists exterior the standard artwork circuit — a lot of whom should not have the gallery illustration required to take part in exhibits like Frieze or the Armory Present — a possibility to exhibit their work throughout artwork honest season and make new connections with collectors and curators.
“Clio was born to be small,” Berni advised Hyperallergic. “Traditional fairs are always too large for the visitor, whose eye eventually becomes tired and desensitized. Offering too many works to see in a single day damages the elective dialogue that should emerge between artwork and viewer.”
The opening of Clio Artwork Honest on September 4, 2025
That has confirmed to be a problem because the honest has grown in recognition. This 12 months, he acquired greater than 500 submissions, nearly double in comparison with earlier years.
As a way to preserve its measurement manageable whereas nonetheless permitting a mixture of artists to point out through the spring and fall artwork honest seasons, Berni break up the honest into two editions held on separate weekends in Might and September. He plans to proceed that format into the longer term.
However Berni mentioned he gained’t change the sorts of artists he consists of within the honest, which is without doubt one of the few Manhattan artwork exhibits that includes impartial artists. He additionally works to draw artists from around the globe, which permits the honest to current works that haven’t been seen in the USA earlier than.
The dearth of gallery illustration retains costs inexpensive. Artists pay a price, roughly $1,500 or so, to take part, and have the choice of hiring Berni’s gallery as a vendor to care for transport and dealing with (during which case the gallery takes 20% of the sale).
Painter Margaret Koval shows a set of eerie oil work of night time road scenes.
The honest’s intimate expertise, the place viewers come nose to nose with artists who’re very happy to elucidate their course of and inspirations, contrasts with the impersonal nature of large-scale gala’s stuffed with industrial galleries the place sellers usually act as intermediaries for the artists they symbolize.
“Contemporary art, in recent years, has become an exclusive world, where artists are too often reduced to begging for elite approval,” Berni mentioned. “We believe the great artist of the future will go underground, will remain clandestine, someone who creates because they obey an unshakable inner will. Success and wealth should count for nothing.”
Fortuitously, they nonetheless know tips on how to social gathering. On the opening of Clio’s first fall version on September 4, artists from greater than 20 international locations, together with Japan, Argentina, Taiwan, Greece, and Italy, milled in regards to the ground as the general public streamed inside.
The honest has its share of longtime native artists, too. An Higher West Facet mixed-media artist who gave her identify as Pearl introduced a number of photograph collages she product of basic New York Metropolis architectural parts, like Artwork Deco detailing on buildings, classic road indicators, and shingled water towers.
“My art is all about New York City architecture,” she mentioned. “I walk around the city and see things that I like, which reminds me of old New York that people take for granted.”
Subsequent to her sales space, New Jersey-based artist Margaret Koval displayed 11 eerie nighttime panorama scenes that she made by portray on the again of a linen canvas and extruding the oil paint via it. Her distinctive course of references the pixellated actuality of digital images and the folksy appeal of needlepoint photographs.
“It takes on layers of meaning and optical effects,” she mentioned. “I love doing paintings of people in urban spaces who are being surveilled.”
In one other nook, Williamsburg artist Nieves Saah shared two work of Hawaiian deities. One featured Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, fireplace, and wind, who’s extensively believed to punish vacationers who pocket shards of basaltic rock once they go to the Large Island. “People take souvenirs, but then things happen to them so they mail them back to Hawaiʻi asking Pele to please forgive them,” she mentioned. “You have to be respectful to nature and Hawaiʻi. The Goddess Pele is watching you.”
Decrease East Facet artist Marcus Glitteris was the lifetime of the social gathering.
Close by, Decrease East Facet artist Marcus Glitteris flitted between conversations all through the night time, providing drinks and taking candid images earlier than assembling everybody who participated in a gaggle photograph.
It helped that his work, a big cloth collage that includes 44 Café Bustelo baggage hand-sewn into two figures holding fingers, was displayed prominently behind the bar. “What I like about Clio is it offers very good quality art at a very affordable price,” Glitteris mentioned. (Costs at Clio vary from $50 all the way in which to $150,000, based on the honest.) “And it’s entertaining.”
The honest’s ongoing second version, on view via this weekend, welcomes an entire new host of artists, from South Korean painter Anikoon together with his cheeky Pop-inspired canvases to LA-based Mary Lai, whose work on wooden look as textured and wealthy as textiles. Because the artwork world seems to embrace new fashions within the face of a altering market, one wonders if “anti-fair” is actually the suitable moniker for Clio — possibly it’s only a common honest that determined to place the artists first.
