EXPO CHICAGO Opens With Local Enthusiasm & Strong Institutional Sales
Toronto-based Patel Brown is showcasing the witty, humorous work of collaborative duo Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber, exploring language, taxonomy and knowledge. The gallery sold multiple works on day one, including a painting priced between $20,000 and $25,000, a sculpture at $8,000 and several smaller works.
Equally successful in Focus was Superposition’s presentation of Helina Metaferia’s recent work. The booth featured hand-cut mixed media collages, a sculptural brass crown with etching, a ceremonial staff in wood and brass and a single-channel video documenting a live performance, all situated within the artist’s ongoing investigation of diasporic identity and ancestral heritage at the intersection of archival research, embodied ritual and political memory. An institution acquired one of the new brass sculptures, Crown (Makeda), priced at $20,500, while another sculpture, Staff (Betiri), priced at $18,500, was placed in a private collection.
Steady demand on the main floor
Multiple sales were also reported by dealers presenting in the main section throughout the day. New York and Los Angeles-based Karma captured the floor’s attention with Kathleen Ryan’s jewel-like “Bad Fruit” sculptures, where, as contemporary vanitas, preciosity hovers in tension with decay. The gallery sold Bad Lemon (Adrift) and Bad Orange (Deep Blue) (2026) for $150,000 and $135,000 respectively, while placing all works by Jeremy Frey, including three flatweaves priced between $30,000 and $55,000 and five basket relief prints priced between $18,000 and $30,000.
Directly opposite, Los Angeles titan Night Gallery featured one of its leading artists, Robert Nava, presenting an entire booth of new, electric works in which the East Chicago native continues his intuitive exercise of mythopoiesis through fantastical characters. The gallery placed several works on day one, priced between $40,000 and $200,000. “Our presentation is very much a homecoming for Robert. He grew up just outside Chicago, and visits to the Art Institute (which now holds many of his drawings in its collection) and the Field Museum were formative. These institutions offered his earliest exposure to ‘Art,’” Brian Faucette, the gallery’s senior director, told Observer, noting a deep connection between Nava’s work and Chicago’s larger Imagist tradition. “The radical cross-pollination of fine art, pop culture, outsider art, and psychedelia that was core to the Hairy Who artists is deeply present in Robert’s epic mutations.”
Among the heavy hitters from the Brazilian ecosystem, Nara Roesler doubled down with simultaneous participation at EXPO and SP-Arte—a move the New York gallery’s director described as “always worth” the effort. The gallery sold three acrylic and oil-on-canvas works by Brazilian painter Elian Almeida for $22,000, $22,000 and $18,000. Almeida’s gesturally instinctive approach builds dense impasto through accumulation as he seeks to appropriate and rewrite colonial narratives. The gallery also placed a work by Monica Ventura—in porcelain, brass, wood and gold leaf, priced at $7,000—whose biomorphic ceramics explore femininity through ancestral techniques and embodied knowledge.
Debuting at the fair after remarkable growth in just one year of operations, Miami-based Opa Gallery showcased a group of new works by self-taught, Geneva-based, Cameroon-born artist Maurice Mboa, who, through his metal-engraved canvases, has developed a rich visual universe infused with his own form of animism. Priced between $50,000 and $60,000, the works immediately attracted strong interest, following an almost sold-out show at the gallery earlier in the year. The gallery is also presenting paintings on linen by French artist Tess Dumon, whose layered compositions channel a perceptual shift shaped by her experience as the mother of an autistic child. Priced around $25,000, these poetic landscapes feel both intimate and expansive, with a cosmological sensibility connecting the personal and the universal.
This edition also marked the first official joint fair presentation between Marc Straus and Swivel Gallery, following their recent merger. The collaboration materialized in a large central booth in the main section, where the two dealers staged a carefully choreographed intergenerational dialogue on materiality, combining artists from both programs with new works by Amy Bravo, Kiah Celeste, Alejandro García Contreras, Lucia Hierro, Otis Jones, Márton Nemes, Edgar Orlaineta, Anne Samat, Antonio Santín, Renée Stout and Marie Watt. The gallery placed several smaller works on the first day and remained hopeful of closing negotiations on a few more ambitious sculptural works in the coming days.
Local establishments that anchor the Chicago scene year-round also performed well, reporting several sales over the VIP preview. Patron placed one of the new poetic abstractions by Chicago-based artist Lindsay Adams for $32,000, ahead of her solo opening the following week at Sean Kelly in New York, which follows a sold-out show in Los Angeles last year.
The gallery also sold a painting by Caroline Kent priced between $15,000 and $45,000 and several materially dense monochrome abstractions by Miao Wang priced between $9,000 and $15,000. Also standing out were the abstract, symbolic works of Alice Tippit—described by the artist as “visual poetry”—which build on the subconscious language of her current museum show at DePaul Art Museum ahead of its closing, with prices ranging from $8,500 to $15,000.
Chicago power dealer moniquemeloche also had a strong first day, placing significant new works by Yvette Mayorga, paired against a bright yellow ground, alongside two portraits by David Shrobe in a shared dialogue with traditional painting and art history. By evening, the gallery confirmed the sale of several works by Sheree Hovsepian and several paintings by Luke Agada. “We’ve enjoyed meeting with many curators and museum directors in our booth, and it’s been a very active first day at the fair,” Meloche told Observer, also noting strong traffic at the gallery’s physical space in recent days, with out-of-town curators and museum groups visiting its current show of vibrant landscapes by Cheryl Pope.
DOCUMENT, now a regular presence at major fairs including Art Basel and Frieze, was equally satisfied with the fair’s new institutional direction under Sierzputowski’s leadership. “Our first day at EXPO was a success. We are impressed with Kate’s leadership and the energy she brought to the fair. It’s a busy week for the city, and we are very proud to be part of this edition,” said the gallery’s partner, Sibylle Friche. The gallery sold a new photography-based work by Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Negative (P1400105) (2024), and one of the suspended nocturnal scenes by Dabin Ahn, The Four Seasons: Spring (Seoul, Chicago) (2026), part of the same series the South Korean-born, Chicago-based artist is currently presenting in a solo show at the gallery.
Good Weather is another fast-growing gallery that has built a reputation for experimental programming both within the Chicago ecosystem and beyond. Presenting in the Focus section alongside Detroit-based What Pipeline, the gallery staged an ambitious solo presentation by Dylan Spaysky, placing Girls (2026)—a large sculptural installation in basket-woven wicker shaped into life-size portraiture—with a private collector for $40,000. Moving fluidly between high and low culture, Spaysky delivers a witty yet unsettling commentary on the choices of adornment, consumption and accumulation through which we construct our identities.
