Read: NYC Art & Design Fairs 2025 Part I.
Continued from the first part of my NYC art and design fair viewings, here are highlights from the remainder of events.
TEFAF New York Art Fair ran from May 9–13, 2025 at the Park Avenue Armory.
TEFAF Maastricht is regarded as the world’s premier fair for fine art, antiques and design, covering 7,000 years of art history from ancient to contemporary. TEFAF New York is an annual fair that encapsulates modern and contemporary art, jewelry, antiquities and design, featuring around 91 leading global exhibitors. In addition to traditional booths, the fair showcased curated spaces in the Armory’s 16 period rooms.
Attending TEFAF felt like stepping into the MET. I was most drawn to their lectures and talk series which were hosted by esteemed institutions on scholarly topics ranging from multigenerational collecting, art restoration, case studies in the field and environmental threats. I enjoyed seeing the curated booths and period rooms that intermixed a bit of everything from furnitures, textile, product design and fine art. Some period rooms had a gothic revival feel featuring classic Greek and Roman marble bust sculptures in dramatic lighting.
It was my first time attending INDEPENDENT fair and I was highly impressed. In its 16th edition, the fair took place at Spring Studios in Tribeca running from May 8–11, 2025 featuring 85 exhibitors.
I was delighted to see work by Sudanese “Godfather of African Modernism” Ibrahim El-Salahi and surrealist Jean-Claude Silbermann’s wall of small strange little storybook object paintings courtesy Galerie Sator from Paris. The irregular shapes of the cut out works were meant to rebel against the “squares that rule the world.”
Independent featured a diverse array of landscapes and animal themed works, rendered with a range of virtuosic informality across small to medium formats. The fair offered everything from delicate paintings and atmospheric abstractions to intimate ceramic objects and figurines. Overall, it showcased a thoughtfully curated selection of galleries emphasizing quality and variety over spectacle, with a presentation that felt cohesive and effortless.
I got to see FOCUS NYC on preview day while booths were still setting up. Founded in 2019 in Paris, FOCUS Art Fair has hosted over 45 exhibitions globally and is held annually in NYC, London and Paris. FOCUS is known as the only NYC fair dedicated to exploring the intersection of tech-enabled and traditional art. The fair also spotlights Asian artists accounting for nearly half of the fair’s exhibitors. This year’s NYC edition featured more than 45 exhibitors from 10 countries and focused on the intersection of creativity and technology including AI, robotics and a series of immersive performances.
Some favorites included artist and digitologist Taezoo Park who utilized found and recycled old outdated tech gadgets from the streets of NYC collected over decades into a thoughtfully assembled monumental mechanical sculpture reminiscent of a high rise and a true adage to the great video art prophet Nam June Paik. New media sculptor Jinah Roh‘s eerie giant baby heads had motion sensor eyes that tracked the passing viewers speaking to the greater surveillance culture we live in today.
Following Frieze week, NYCxDesign 2025 festival ran from May 15th-21st, 2025. As part of the packed roster of events, select galleries and shops in Chelsea and West Village hosted series of show rooms featuring an array of interior design goods, furnitures and contemporary artworks. Participating venues included Dobrinka Salzman Gallery, Friedman Benda, Bossa Furniture, Les Ateliers Courbet, Etēline, Artemest Galleria, Pierre Yovanovitch Mobilier, Bernd Goeckler, Eerdmans, Hostler Burrows, Karl Kemp, Maison Gerard and Prelle & Passementerie Verrier Paris.
I was blown away by artist Tanya Aguiñiga‘s exhibit “Weighted” at Friedman Benda which featured otherworldly fiber arts alters and Hostler Burrows magnetic show room.
One of my favorite design installations from NYCxDesign was Chroma, an immersive installation presented by the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York located inside the WSA 180 building atrium. The multi-sensory interactive exhibit curated by Swiss designer and Creative Director of design studio Sula, Nadja Stäubli was designed to highlight the craftsmanship and playful forms of Swiss design.
The installation brought together works by Atelier Oï, Röthlisberger, USM Modular Furniture and Jakob Schlaepfer, alongside new pieces by Sula and interactive sculptures by Stäubli and Brooklyn based studio Twoseven. The space invited visitors to engage with the materials through touch. Chroma was programmed really well across the three days with a fun opening event, guest speakers, catered by Swiss foods, live music and performances.
Amidst all the smaller pop-up events during design week, there was Shelter by Afternoon Light Design Fair a much bigger fair running from May 17-19 at the Starrett-Lehigh Building featuring over 100 leading brands and studios into a bustling, immersive celebration of design that blended commerce, culture and creativity. It was one the best design fairs I have attended that merged the worlds of art and design. This year was Afternoon Light’s debut offering visitors the opportunity to shop directly from emerging and established brands alike, and offered exhibitors a democratic platform to connect with consumers and potential collaborators. Shelter also featured a robust slate of talks that tackled radical thinking at the intersection of design, business and media.
Major Brand Debuts and Favorite Curated Highlights Included:
● DYSMORPHIA is an experiential, reflective group exhibition by artists Dana Hurwitz of @bondhardware @natalialandowska and @marcusv_depaula. Anchored in the theme of body dysmorphia, the installation creates a conceptual and physical interpretation of distortion and transformation. Connecting disparate mediums in a dialogue about how we see ourselves, prompting reflection on beauty and imperfection via jewelry, sculpture and lighting, the trio invited viewers to reflect on the ever-shifting perception of one’s own body. The booth presented distorted reality through resin sculptures, body transformation via on-site piercing and porcelain forms.
● Luke Haynes debuted Entropies studio featuring his acclaimed contemporary series of quilts. Over the past 20 years, Haynes has developed a groundbreaking approach to textile portraiture, blending architecture, photography, and reclaimed materials into quilted compositions that challenge the boundary between craft and fine art.
● OLLIN presented their debut collection called Tlaloc, which serves as a tribute to the past and the future – where ancient volcanic stone carving meets the precision of modern metalwork, resulting in pieces that are as timeless as they are daring.
● Tortuga Forma debuted its Baum Lights. Designed in collaboration with DITTOHOUSE and Chamusquina, the innovative Baum light is a soft sculptural piece created to celebrate patterned textiles, and is offered as a suspended pendant or plug-in counterweight lamp.
● JONALDDUDD, the satellite fair with a punk ethos, showcased a record-shattering 65 designers with a presentation curated by Chen & Kai, onsite at Shelter in celebration of its 10th anniversary.
● London based OYUNA was founded by Mongolian born designer Oyuna Tserendorj, preseting timeless cashmere apparel and home designs that express intersection of London edge and the energy from the Mongolian steppes.
My final NYCxDesign stop was xSouvenir exhibition housed in The Canvas Gallery at the Oculus featuring 72 designers who created collectible object inspired by New York City. The showcase presented various souvenirs from ordinary objects into thoughtful designs that captured the playful personal reflections of the city’s character making for a unique keepsake experience.
hilitehead 
elaborate?