Earlier this year, Rajaratnam announced that she would leave her role as partner at Mnuchin Gallery after 15 years. During her tenure there, she was known for staging groundbreaking exhibitions of artists who had long been overlooked by the mainstream art world, including Sam Gilliam, Ed Clark, Alma Thomas, Betty Blayton, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, and David Hammons, whose five-decade retrospective in 2016 is still on one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of the elusive artist ever mounted. In the process, she also helped to build up markets for these artists.

In a statement, White Cube founder Jay Jopling said, “I have closely followed Sukanya’s exhibition programming over the past years and consider her to be one of the most outstanding market-makers in the art world. I am delighted that she has chosen to join White Cube and I look forward very much to working with her.”

Based in New York, Rajaratnam’s new role, according to a release, “will focus on market-making and exhibition-making” across White Cube’s various locations, which currently includes permanent ones in London, Hong Kong, and Paris, as well a seasonal West Palm Beach space.

In a statement, Rajaratnam said, “I admire the curatorial integrity that White Cube brings to its artists and estates and am excited to be able to contribute to that across a global platform. We may be at an inflection point in the market and I believe it is imperative for galleries to add value through exhibition programming and content.”

White Cube will also open its first New York location later this year and hired Courtney Willis Blair, a former partner at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, to lead the space last November. Located at 1002 Madison Avenue in New York’s Upper East Side, the space’s inaugural exhibition, organized by Willis Blair, will be titled “Chopped & Screwed.” Exploring “the idea of distortion as both a formal and conceptual tool used to examine and subvert well-established narratives or systems,” per a release, the show will include work by artists like Theaster Gates, David Hammons, Christian Marclay, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Julie Mehretu, and Nathaniel Mary Quinn.

In addition to news of Rajaratnam’s hiring, White Cube also announced that it will expand to Seoul, which was first reported by the Financial Times. Citing the success of the inaugural edition of Frieze Seoul last September, the new ground-floor, 3,230 square-foot space will consist of exhibition spaces, a viewing room, and offices. Located in the capital city’s Gangnam-gu district, it will be in the same building as the private museum Horim Art Centre, which focuses on Korean antiquities and modern art.

In the past two years, numerous Western galleries have expanded to Seoul, including Gladstone, Esther Schipper, Perrotin, and Thaddaeus Ropac, which recently announced that it will add another floor to its Seoul location. Two galleries, Pace and Lehmann Maupin, that had established presences in the city slightly earlier also recently grew their footprint. And in March, the Centre Pompidou confirmed rumors that it would open a branch in Seoul, tentatively scheduled to open in 2025.

Both fairs take place in partnership with each other and are held on different floors of the capital city’s COEX Convention & Exhibition Center, from September 7–9, with a VIP preview day on September 6.  

At Frieze, all four mega-galleries—Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, and David Zwirner—will return, as will several leading blue-chip enterprises like Thaddaeus Ropac, Paula Cooper Gallery, Kurimanzutto, Lehmann Maupin, Lisson Gallery, Galerie Lelong & Co., Mendes Wood DM, Sprüth Magers, and Take Ninagawa.

The main section of the fair will have basically the same number of South Korea–based galleries—among them Kukje, Leeahn, PKM, Johyun, and Jason Haam—as the first edition, with the only new one being rising gallery Whistle, which had a booth in Frieze New York’s Focus section last month. (Just over half of the Korea-based galleries in across the fair’s three sections will also all take part in Kiaf.)

The fair will again be accompanied by two smaller sections, Frieze Masters (for works made at any point in art history) and Focus Asia (solo presentations from Asia-based galleries), which is being advised by Hyejung Jang, the chief curator of the DOOSAN Gallery, and Joselina Cruz, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila.

Galleries in the Frieze Masters section include Gallery Hyundai, Gray, Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, Skarstedt, and Axel Vervoordt, while Focus Asia will include Capsule Shanghai, G Gallery, and Yutaka Kikutake Gallery.

In a statement, Frieze Seoul director Patrick Lee said, “Building on the success of last year’s inaugural edition, Frieze Seoul 2023 features a line-up of exceptional galleries from across the globe, with a special focus on Asia-based exhibitors showcasing the best art from the region. In addition, we are excited to expand the fair’s dynamic program of special projects embodying the spirit of collaboration, creating a moment for cross-cultural connections between artists, collectors, curators, and art enthusiasts from around the world.”

While Frieze Seoul’s exhibitor number has about 10 more galleries than last year’s edition, Kiaf has grown much more rapidly, with 210 galleries, representing nearly a 30 percent increase over the 164 that showed last year.

Among those lined up are Korean galleries like Arario Gallery, BHAK, Gana Art, Hakgojae Gallery, PYO Gallery, and Wooson Gallery, as well as international ones like Carl Kostyál, Carvalho Park, Galleria Continua, Ora-Ora, Peres Projects, and Rachel Uffner Gallery.

Last year, the fair debuted a new section for emerging artists, NFTs, and new media called Kiaf Plus, which was staged at a different location; this time around, it will return but be integrated into the main halls in Coex. Galleries taking part in that section include Carlye Packer, Everyday Mooonday, Swivel Gallery, Streams Gallery, and Tuesday to Friday.

In a statement, Dal-Seung Hwang, the association’s president, said, “We are honored and proud to contribute to the development of Seoul as an international hub for art and culture, in close partnership with our galleries, partner organizations, and the Korean government. As Korea’s leading art fair, Kiaf will once again serve as a platform to showcase outstanding artists from Korea and Asia, with a focus on forward-thinking and dynamic contemporary art.”

The full exhibitor lists for both fairs follow below.

Frieze Seoul

Leading Galleries

Frieze Masters

Focus Asia

Kiaf Seoul

2448 ARTSPACE
2Gil29 Gallery
313 ART PROJECT
ALLME ARTSPACE
Alzueta Gallery
ARARIO GALLERY
Art Front Gallery
Art SoHyang
ARTPARK
Artside Gallery
Artspace H
Asia Art Center
ATELIER AKI
BAIK ART
BAIKSONG GALLERY
BHAK
Bienvenu Steinberg & J
biscuit gallery
Bode Galerie
BON GALLERY
Carl Kostyál
Carlye Packer
Carvalho Park
Cassina Projects
Chosun Art Gallery
Chung Art Gallery
Chung Jark Gallery
CMay Gallery
Cob
Colector
Cristea Roberts Gallery
Dado Art Gallery
DATE GALLERY
Denny Gallery
Der-Horng Art Gallery
DIE GALERIE
Dohing Art
DONG SOONG GALLERY
Dongsanbang Gallery
Dongwon Gallery
Duarte Sequeira
DURU ARTSPACE
e.jung Gallery
Eligere
Everyday Mooonday
G Gallery
Galeria Fran Reus
Galerie Carzaniga
Galerie Droste
Galerie GAIA
Galerie Isabelle Lesmeister
Galerie Klose Contemporary Tommorow
Galerie Kornfeld
Galerie LJ
Galerie Marguo
Galerie Pici
Galerie Stephanie
Galerie Thomas
Galerie Vazieux
GALERIE VON&VON
Galerie Zwischen
Galleria Continua
Gallery 361
Gallery 41
Gallery Apple
GALLERY ARTSOOP
Gallery Bakyoung
Gallery BANDITRAZOS
Gallery Baum
Gallery Daon
Gallery Delaive
Gallery Doll
Gallery FINE
Gallery FM
Gallery Focus
Gallery Gabi
Gallery Godo
Gallery Grimson
Gallery Hyundai
Gallery idm
Gallery iLHO
Gallery Imazoo
Gallery J. ONE
Gallery Jeon
Gallery JINSUN
Gallery JJ
Gallery Joeun
GALLERY JUYOUNG
Gallery KUZO
Gallery MAC
Gallery MANO
GALLERY MARE
GALLERY MARK
Gallery MIZ
Gallery NoW
GALLERY PALZO
Gallery Planet
Gallery Q
Gallery Sein
Gallery Sejul
GALLERY SEOHWA
Gallery Seorim
Gallery Shilla
Gallery Sklo
GALLERY SOHEON & SOHEON Contemporary
GALLERY SP
Gallery STAN
Gallery Tsubaki
Gallery We
Gallery Woo
Gallery Woong
GALLERY YEH
Gallery YOON
Gallery2
gallerychosun
GalleryMEME
Gana Art
Garam Gallery
Hakgojae Gallery
Hana Art Gallery
Hidden M Gallery
HOFA Gallery
IAH
isart gallery
Jack Bell Gallery
JJ JOONG JUNG GALLERY
Johyun Gallery
JOONGANG GALLERY
K.O.N.G. GALLERY
Kamakura Gallery
Keumsan Gallery
KICHE
KIDARI GALLERY
Kukje Gallery
KwanHoon Gallery
L21 Gallery
LA BIBI Gallery
Lazy Mike
LEE & BAE
LEE EUGEAN GALLERY
Leeahn Gallery
LEEHWAIK GALLERY
LEESEOUL GALLERY
LKIF GALLERY
Lucie Chang Fine Arts
LYNN Fine Art Gallery
MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY
Mind Set Art Center
Mizoe Art Gallery
Mizuma & Kips
MOIN Gallery
Mrs.
MYUNG GALLERY
Newchild Gallery
Nine Gallery
Obscura
Ocean Gallery
Odds and Ends
Opera Gallery
Ora-Ora
Over The Influence
Pangee
PARKRYUSOOK GALLERY
Patricia Low Contemporary
Peres Projects
Picasso Gallery
Pigment Gallery
PKM Gallery
PNC Gallery
PYO Gallery
Rachel Uffner Gallery
RHO GALLERY
ROW GALLERY
SARAI Gallery (SARADIPOUR)
Seo Gallery
SEOJUNG ART
Seoshin Gallery
SH Gallery
SINMI Gallery
SM Fine Art Gallery
SONG ART GALLERY
SOUL ART SPACE
SPACE NAMU GALLERY AURORA
Space Willing N Dealing
SrHCROWN
Steve Turner
Streams Gallery
SUNGALLERY
Suomei M50 Gallery
Suppoment Gallery
Swivel Gallery
The Columns Gallery
The Hole
The Page Gallery
The Spectacle Group
ThisWeekendRoom
Ting Ting Art Space
Topohaus
Triumph Gallery
Tuesday to Friday
UARTSPACE
UM Gallery
V&E ART
Vit Gallery
Wellside Gallery
Whitestone Gallery
Wooson Gallery
Yeasung Gallery
YEEMOCK GALLERY
YESONG GALLERY
Yumiko Chiba Associates
Yusto / Giner

This fall, Hauser & Wirth will open in SoHo, at 134 Wooster, once occupied by Gagosian Gallery when SoHo was New York’s main gallery neighborhood. It will be Hauser & Wirth’s third space in the city, after ones in Chelsea and the Upper East Side. And next year, Artfarm, an independent hospitality group that was founded by gallery cofounders Iwan and Manuela Wirth in 2014, will open a new restaurant kitty-corner to the SoHo space, at 130 Prince Street.

The SoHo space shows that Hauser & Wirth, one of the biggest galleries in the world, is continuing to expand. In February, it opened a second space in Los Angeles, across town in a former vintage car showroom in West Hollywood. Later this year, it will open a space in Paris in a 19th-century hôtel particulier in the city’s 8th arrondissement.

“It’s not that we were looking for a space in SoHo,” Marc Payot, Hauser & Wirth president, told ARTnews in an interview. “But this space became available and that’s what figured in our wish to be present there. We have a tendency to go to places where others don’t go.”

He added, “SoHo is definitely not the place where galleries are—there are really only very few.”

Located at 134 Wooster Street, just north of Prince Street, the ground-floor gallery, with 16-and-a-half-foot ceilings and 4,000 square feet of space, is one of the few remaining single-story buildings in the city’s SoHo-Historic Cast Iron District. As with past projects, the gallery will maintain the building’s architecture, which dates back to 1920 when it was built as a truck garage.

“For most of our galleries, we have transformed existing spaces into galleries,” Payot said. “When possible, we like to respect the original architecture and pay tribute to that when it is a beautiful space. In this case, a well-proportioned, simple space with skylights is ideal. It’s also very different from what we have in Chelsea or Uptown. We loved it, as it was in its bones.”

Looking at History

The block is rich with art history. From 1991 to 1999, 134 Wooster was the downtown location for Gagosian. Afterward, the gallery, like countless others at the turn of the 21st century, decamped for Chelsea. (In the years since, it has been used as a retail space, with its most recent one being an Adidas store, per a listing on LoopNet from last year.)  

Down the street, in the 1970s, dealer Heiner Friedrich set up the New York iteration of his gallery at 141 Wooster, and it was there that he cofounded the Dia Art Foundation with Philippa de Menil and Helen Winkler. Friedrich’s final exhibition in that space is now an iconic work of Land Art, Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room, where it has been on long-term view since 1977. On the corner, at Prince Street, was the location of FOOD, the artist-run restaurant founded by Gordon Matta-Clark, Carol Goodden, and Tina Girouard.

“That history and density of culture fascinated us, and we felt that was absolutely perfect in terms of the context of where we want to be,” Payot said.

For just over two decades, SoHo reigned as the premier gallery neighborhood in New York. In 1968, Paula Cooper was the first art dealer to open a commercial gallery space in SoHo, which was located on Prince Street. From 1972 to 1996, Paula Cooper was located on the same block of Wooster Street, before moving to West 21st Street in Chelsea. Other dealers soon followed, with 420 West Broadway hosting several galleries over the course of its history, including Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend, André Emmerich, and Mary Boone.

Since the exodus to Chelsea in the mid-’90s, few galleries have remained or opened in SoHo, with the exception of June Kelly and Louis K. Meisel, which are still active, and Team Gallery, which operated on Grand Street and closed in 2020. From 1996 to 2010, Deitch Projects operated a few blocks south, at 18 Wooster Street, then the home of the Swiss Institute, which Jeffrey Deitch reopened as his space in 2016. In January, Los Angeles–based dealer Nino Mier opened a new space on Crosby Street, just south of Spring Street.

The Scene Downtown

Hauser & Wirth’s opening in SoHo marks its first official gallery space in Lower Manhattan, though its founders did operate a temporary space out of an apartment on Franklin Street some three decades ago.

Gallery cofounder Iwan Wirth first had a presence in the city in partnership with David Zwirner, who at the time had a gallery at 43 Greene Street in SoHo. Under the name Zwirner & Wirth, that enterprise ran on the Upper East Side on 69th Street from 2000 to 2009, when Hauser & Wirth took over the space. It first opened in Chelsea in 2013 on West 18th Street, which it closed in 2016. In New York, the gallery continues to operate its 69th Street location in addition to a custom-built space on West 22nd Street, which opened in 2020.   

The nearby neighborhood of Tribeca is a more common destination for galleries these days, with PPOW, JTT, Andrew Kreps, James Cohan, and Canada relocating there in recent years. Alexander Gray Associates and Marian Goodman Gallery have announced plans to open in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, the David Zwirner–affiliated space 52 Walker, which is run by Ebony L. Haynes, opened in the October 2021, and Pace Gallery founder Arne Glimcher opened his own project space, 125 Newbury, on Broadway last fall.

Those galleries won’t be far off from Hauser & Wirth’s SoHo location, which will be a short walk away.

“Maybe if we had found the right space in Tribeca, who knows,” Payot said. “But it is a very different situation to have a show in Chelsea in this Annabelle Selldorf building, with its great proportions, or a townhouse uptown, which is intimate. This garage space in SoHo downtown feels very different. To create these different spaces for our artists is fundamentally what we are excited about.”

Looking to the Future

Unlike Hauser & Wirth’s other spaces, the forthcoming SoHo one will operate slightly differently. The shows will be on view for longer periods of time, as a way to encourage more sustained engagement with the shows. It’s an approach that takes into account “who is in SoHo,” which at the moment isn’t the most heavily trafficked neighborhood as an art hub, according to Payot.

“It gives the opportunity to visit in a similar way that you would visit a museum—we’re not caught in a six-times-a-year rotation,” he said. “Depending on what the show is, the gallery will create links with the cultural landscape of the city.”

Additionally, Hauser & Wirth announced that Artfarm, an independent hospitality group that was founded by gallery cofounders Iwan and Manuela Wirth in 2014, will open a new restaurant kitty-corner to the SoHo space, at 130 Prince Street, next year.

Artfarm currently operates two of the three restaurants at Hauser & Wirth’s locations, Manuela at its downtown Los Angeles space and the Roth Bar & Grill at its Somerset gallery. (The third restaurant, the Cantina in Menorca, is operated by the local Bodegas Binifadet.) Additionally, Artfarm operates a five-star boutique hotel in Scotland, the Fife Arms, as well as the Audley Public House in Mayfair and the Groucho Club in London’s Soho, among other properties.

“New York is a very dense urban environment so it’s not comparable to these places but what is the same and what has the same ethos is that proximity between the gallery and a restaurant,” Payot said. “Because these two spaces were available at the same time, we said this is a unique opportunity in New York to mirror these two very important entities for us. We love that proximity that creates spaces where artists want to be and where our community wants to participate.”

For this year’s Frieze New York, Tehran-based Dastan Gallery brought work from an intergenerational group of five female artists, spanning a variety of styles, mediums, and time periods.

The gallery’s directors chose paintings by Behjat Sadr, Farideh Lashai, and Farah Ossouli, as well as a colorful knit yarn installation by Bita Fayyazi and a multi-channel video installation Newsha Tavakolian.

“There is lots of attention on Gen Z and young girls in the street but we wanted to get the focus back to 100 years ago to see how it’s not just something happening today,” Mamali Shafahi, a director at Dastan, told ARTnews.“It was generations and generations working on it and making these social changes happen”

The booth took inspiration from Germano Celant, who curated Lashai’s exhibition at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in 2015. “He was under the impression that Farideh’s life was just as important as her work because of the social impact she has had,” gallery founder Hormoz Hematian said. “All of these artists have really played a major role in their society and their surroundings as well.”

Sadr, who was born in 1924 and died in 2009, was one of the very first art professors at the University of Tehran, where she taught for over 20 years. Dastan brought one of her last abstract paintings, Untitled (2009), featuring dynamic brushstrokes of black oil on paper.

Shafahi called Tavakolian, who was born in 1981, “a pioneering photographer” who started out in photojournalism before shifting to art-making. Her six-channel video installation, Listen (2010), which was exhibited at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo in 2019, shows video portraits of professional singers in front of colorful backgrounds without any audio, leaving the viewer to focus on the women’s expressive faces and intensity, their voices censored.

“They are not actresses, they are real singers, and she went to their studio to record,” Shafahi said.

A cofounder of the DENA group, which aims to promote the work of Iranian women artists, Ossouli has brought to the fair a 2014 gouache painting on cardboard. Titled David and I (2), the work takes the composition of Jacques-Louis David’s The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799) and filters it through the lens of Persian miniature painting. “We did a show of her at the gallery four years ago: a whole series on how women are suppressed in society and how brave and courageous they are,” Shafahi said. Within the context of the recent protests, the work takes on renewed significance.

Bringing together 26 exhibitors, this tightly curated fair has a lot of gems and exceptional art on view across four floors, showing the diversity of art from Africa and its diaspora, which this fair has been instrumental in showcasing for a decade now.

Below, a look at the best booths at the 1-54 New York fair.

The evening sale, which took place after the first day of the Frieze New York, featured 65 lots of modern, postwar, and contemporary works spanning 100 years by blue-chip artists like Picasso, Alexander Calder, Man Ray, Christopher Wool, and Gerhard Richter. The Fineberg two-parter will also finish off the auction house’s May sales in New York, which earlier this month saw works from the collections of Paul Allen, S.I. Newhouse, and Alan and Dorothy Press hit the block.

Fineberg’s holdings were described by Christie’s as “unique and special” for the breadth of styles, movements, and artists spanning a century of art. Phone bids came in from Taiwan, Germany, and Amsterdam, but the final results resembled the tepid sales at the Newhouse auction last week. The evening did set five new auction records for artists such as Barkley L. Hendricks, Alma Thomas, and Alina Szapocznikow.

The evening’s top lot was Christopher Wool’s Untitled (1963), which also had the largest estimate going into the night at $15 million to $20 million. But, the work, which features the sentence “FUCK EM IF THEY CANT TAKE A JOKE” in colorful stenciling, hammered for only $8.4 million, or $10.07 million with fees.

That discrepancy between estimates and hammer prices also occurred for works by Lee Krasner, Gerhard Richter, Jeff Koons, and Willem de Kooning. Richter’s 1967 painting Badende, which was exhibited at the 1972 Venice Biennale, carried an estimate of $15 million to $20 million, but sold for just $9.61 million.

The Koons, a 1987 stainless steel sculpture titled Kiepenkerl (Humpty Dumpty), went for just under $2 million (estimate $3 million–$5 million), while a 1983 de Kooning sold for $5.3 million (estimate $8 million–$12 million) and a 1977 sold for $3.7 million (estimate $6 million–$8 million). The evening’s two Krasners sold for $4.3 million (estimate $6 million–$8 million) and $3.4 million (estimate $4 million–$6 million).

Similarly, Picasso’s 1969 Buste d’homme lauré realized a final auction price of $8.46 million. This is not only below the low end of Christie’s estimate of $9 million to $12 million, but not much more than the $7.8 million Fineberg paid for painting at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in September 2018, which when adjusted for inflation is around $9.3 million.

Works by James Rosenquist, Norman Lewis, Louis Bourgeois, Francis Picabia, and Mark Grotjahn were marked as passed and did not find buyers.

The evening, however, did get off to a momentous start. The first lot, a blue porcelain sculpture titled 109 (Face Jug Series) by Simone Leigh, sold for $630,000, above its estimate of $300,000 to $500,000. It was quickly followed by a Beauford Delaney oil painting from 1960, Composition Blue, which sold for $781,200 (against a $300,000–$500,000 estimate).

Ruth Asawa’s Untitled (S.410, Hanging Seven-Lobed, Three-Part Continuous Form (Stripes)), from ca. 1955, and Alice Neel’s The De Vegh Twins (1975) both prompted rapid bids from paddles in the showroom and clients on the phone with specialists. Asawa’s galvanized steel and brass wire sculpture sold for $2.47 million, in between its estimate of $2 million to $3 million, and Neel’s painting sold for nearly $2.6 million, well above its estimate of $1.2 million to $1.8 million.

Concerning the evening’s records, Thomas’s exuberant abstraction A Fantastic Sunset (1970) sold for $3.9 million on an estimate of $2 million to $3 million. Szapocznikow’s resin-and-granite sculpture Portret Wielokrotny (Dwukrotny) [Multiple Portrait (Double)], from 1967, also garnered rapid bidding, selling for $907,200 and smashing its estimate of $150,000 to $200,000.

But it was the six minutes of bidding for Hendrick’s 1971 portrait of fellow artist Stanley Whitney that stole the evening, as it was expected to break his current record. The last time a Hendricks work came to auction was in December 2020 where it sold for $4 million. The Whitney portrait’s final price of $6.1 million (estimate $5 million–$7 million) solidly beat that record by more than $2 million. 

In a post-sale statement, Sara Friedlander, Christie’s deputy chairman of post-war and contemporary art put a positive spin on the sale, saying that “Jerry Fineberg would have reveled in this evening, which showed how far ahead of the curve he was in his collecting evidenced by the multitude of world record prices set by artists, many of whom have never appeared in an evening sale at Christie’s.”

Of the 37 works offered, 33 lots sold with just one withdrawn before the sale’s start. Works by mid-career established artists like Simon Leigh and Caroline Walker were among the ten lots backed by the auction house with third-party guarantees. By the end of the hour-and-a-half long sale, led by Phillips London–based auctioneer Henry Highley, the evening’s lots hammered at a total of $56.4 million, a figure that landed well below the pre-sale estimate of $63.2 million to $91 million.

Anchoring the sale was a work by Banksy, a fixture at Phillips evening sales that typically brings in seven-figure prices, buoying them in the process. The Banksy was a smaller financial anchor than the 1982 painting Untitled (Devil) by Jean-Michel Basquiat that Phillips sold in last year’s May sale. That painting, which was being sold by prominent collector Yusaku Maezawa, went for $85 million, marking the most expensive lot ever secured by Phillips.

Wednesday night, paintings by Banksy, Pablo Picasso, and Roy Lichtenstein were among the top sellers. Despite relatively tame bidding, each sold for final prices within their estimates: $9.7 million, $7.3 million and $5.5 million, respectively.

Unlike past seasons, works by Warhol have largely been out of the limelight this season at sales across all three major auction houses, even with a recently opened show dedicated to the Pop artist at the Brant Foundation’s East Village space. The only one to appear in an evening sale is a 1973 silkscreened painting in which four Mona Lisas are rendered in a black-and-sepia-toned grid. It hammered at $1.9 million, below its $2 million low estimate, to a bidder on the phone with Phillips New York deputy chairman, Robert Manley.

Among the standout lots of the night was a figurative painting by Noah Davis that was offered as the first lot of the evening. Multiple bidders on the phone with New York–based specialists vied for Davis’s untitled painting from 2010 that depicts a half-dressed Black woman splayed out asleep on a life-sized stuffed animal. The painting sold for $990,600, more than nine times its $100,000 estimate. The result is the second highest price for the artist at auction, behind the $1.5 million record set at Christie’s last year, and served as a coup for Phillips, which competes against the much larger Sotheby’s and Christie’s for contemporary art consignments.

In an interview following the sale, New York advisor David Shapiro said the result for the Davis reflects pent up demand among collectors for works that are difficult to find by the late artist, who died at the age of 33 in 2019. “The works are so rare, especially to find one that good,” he said.

Interest in undervalued artists of color, a trend that has defined the auction circuit in the last three years, continued in this sale. A 2019 painting by the Los Angeles–based artist Henry Taylor, 65, titled Dakar, Senegal #3 was among the few works alongside Davis’s to elicit a bidding war. Taylor produced it while traveling to Senegal in 2019, the year he was featured in the Venice Biennale. The painting, a portrait of a seated security guard whose visage is slightly masked by a pair of sunglasses, hammered at a price of $460,000 to applause; the sum was more than five times the $80,000 low estimate. With fees, the final price was $584,200, going to a bidder on the phone with Phillips content administrator, Ferguson Amo. The figure was still under the standing record of $975,000 set for a work by Taylor at auction in 2018.

At other points, early and mid-career figurative painters like Anna Weyant and Caroline Walker, were among the artists to see attention among interested buyers. UK-based Walker has gained a following among European collectors and has recently been in a fixture in London evening sales.

Her 2010 painting, Conservation, which depicts a woman in her underwear stretching to reach a vase, surpassed expectations. The painting, which had a financial guarantee, hammered at a price of $370,000, well above the estimate of $150,000. It went to a bidder in the room, who competed against a client on the phone with Manley for it. The final price of the work was $469,900 with fees.

At another point, the emerging category saw more selective bidding. A canvas by Weyant, a rising painter now represented by Gagosian whose slick portraits of female figures have gained recent traction, was one of the evening’s few ultra-contemporary lots. Works of this kind, typically ones made in the past three years, have been a main focus for Phillips. Her 2021 painting Unconditional Love, a scene depicting two women with one seated on the other’s lap, sold for $609,600 (with fees), hammering in the middle of its estimate range.

By the sale’s end, things were coming to a close on a high when a work the late American artist Elaine Sturtevant, known for her irreverent copying of canonical male artist came up on the block. Study for Marilyn, a riff on Warhol, hammered at $1.5 million, again with Manley’s bidder over its $1 million low estimate. The work went for a final price of $2.9 million with fees.

Among those in attendance were collectors like Lonti Ebers, Maja Hoffmann, Estrellita Brodsky, Komal Shah, Pamela Joyner, and Ricard Agakawa, as well as museum directors and curators like Johanna Burton and Naomi Beckwith. Former Real Housewives of New York star Kelly Killoren Bensimon even pushed me out of the way to take a photo in front of a Jack Whitten work.

Below, a look at the best on offer at the 2023 edition of Frieze New York, which runs until May 21 at the Shed in Hudson Yards.

Bradley joined Petzel in 2021 and had his only solo show with the gallery, his first in New York in six years, in 2022. News of Bradley’s departure from Petzel was first rumored in Artnet News’s “Wet Paint” column last month.

Prior to joining Petzel, Bradley had been with Gagosian since 2015, having joined the gallery from Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, which first began showing him in 2011. That was the year he had his last solo show with New York’s Canada gallery, which had shown him since 2006. (Bradley has maintained a relationship with Canada throughout his various other gallery representation deals, and that relationship will continue now that he has joined Zwirner.)

When Bradley got representation with Petzel, he also announced that he had signed on with Xavier Hufkens in Brussels and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, which has locations in Vienna and Zurich. Hufkens mounted a Bradley solo this past September, and Presenhuber’s solo for Bradley is on view at its Vienna location until May 25. Bradley will continue to work with both Hufkens and Presenhuber.

Bradley is best known for his layered abstractions in which blobs of color and lines meld together, creating dense scenes that hint at some kind of figuration. His current Presenhuber show, however, shows another side of the artist, focusing on his sculptures and works on paper.

In an email to ARTnews, dealer David Zwirner said he had been “a committed fan” of Bradley’s since his first showing at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in 2011, adding, “I remember finding that show extremely powerful and inspiring. While he is of course first and foremost probing the possibilities of abstraction, I also love his hide-and-seek approach to figuration, especially in the most recent work.”

Some 91 galleries are participating in the fair’s 2023 edition, which fills the Park Avenue Armory through May 16. The blue-chip presenters include David Zwirner, Pace, Gladstone Gallery, Gallery Hyundai, Mnuchin Gallery, and Thaddaeus Ropac. Jump scare warning: Gagosian, located immediately inside the Armory’s great hall, brought a blown-up image from Jeff Koons’ smug “Made in Heaven” series, in which the nude artist is entwined with his former wife, the porn star La Cicciolina.

TEFAF New York lacks the dedicated irreverence of Spring/Break or the focus of Independent, which has curated an admirably inclusive show downtown. Accordingly, the fair is best approached piece by piece. Thankfully, many pieces for sale are exquisite.

Keep an eye out for David Zwirner’s solo presentation of Joseph Albers, which spotlights his seminal series “Variant/Adobe,” started in 1947. A standout is the painting Browns, Ochre, Yellow (1948). Mayor Gallery is reintroducing the singular geometric compositions of Verena Loewensberg (1912–1986), a dancer, weaver, designer, and impressive color theorist based for most of her life in Zurich. Meanwhile, Demisch Danant has brought elegant wall textiles by Sheila Hicks and an eye-catching crimson lacquer console by Maria Pergay.

Below are our picks of the best booths TEFAF New York 2023 has to offer.