“It’s really key to our industry to be delusional. Like, you just need to have this delusional brain to run a gallery these days,” said Tribeca-based dealer Margot Samel. The delusion, of course, is “a true belief in what artists are doing,” she told me, and imagining how to put together a collection of ideas that reflect contemporary art’s telos of now. Luckily, that’s all found in the second edition of Esther, known as Esther II, which runs until this Saturday, May 10. (Don’t be like the folks who knocked on the door on Sunday last year, only to discover no one was home.)
Staged throughout the Estonian House, which remains a private-members club for the Northern European country’s citizens or their kin, this alternative art fair held its first opening on Tuesday to almost 700 visitors. Founders and gallerists Samel and Olga Temnikova, whose partnership rapport includes lots of giggles and ribbing in both English and Estonian, joked that perhaps the limited access to the Beaux Arts architectural gem on East 34th Street was the main draw, and not the unique concept or curatorial discovery the fair poses. As a refresher, Esther has “no white walls, there are no booths, there’s nothing hard-edged,” Samel explained.
Initially conceived as an Estonian showcase of Baltic artists, whose presence in the American market and institutional circuit remains limited, though increasingly visible, Esther has morphed into a collaborative invitational. This year, Samel and Temnikova engaged 25 galleries from 17 cities across Europe, Asia, and the United States, with only four outfits participating a second time. Because, as Samel stated, “we wanted to open it up a little bit and have a slightly different experience, and as Olga had said before that, you just kind of want to be reborn again.”
While there’s a sizable share of familiar contemporary paintings, such as John McAllister’s pastel mise-en-scène landscapes (the second coming of Bonnard?) or hyperreal Imagists-inspired canvases by Alexandra Barth, there’s also a healthy representation of sumptuous quirk, like Kim Farkas’s biomorphic light sculptures and mixed-media sculptural collages by the late, Philly-based artist Leroy Johnson.
The fair’s approach has proved to be more flexitarian than top-down. From chatting with gallerists, who are not required to sit all day at their designated spaces and instead offer signage with their contact information should someone be interested in a work, the invitations arrived from mutual exchange between the founders and galleries. Collaboration is baked into the concept, which offers an alternative model to the expensive fair brands — the price to exhibit at Esther, as Samel quipped, is equivalent to the doorframe (and maybe a wall outlet, too) at one of the Big Three. (For those curious, it’s a $2,500 fee.)
Temnikova adds, “Fairs haven’t been really delivering, and gallerists really were thinking twice if you want to give them all that power.” In these uncertain times, minding the ledgers isn’t simply prudent; for many galleries, it’s a necessity.
Participants include established New York galleries like James Fuentes, Sargent’s Daughters, and Tara Downs to tastemaking cool-kids like Sans Titre (Paris), BWA Warszawa (Warsaw), ILY2 (Portland), and Bank (Shanghai/New York), to small-but-mighty operations like Layr (Vienna) and Hagiwara Projects (Tokyo). Many of the gallerists have arrived in New York only to participate in Esther, and not in one of the nine other fairs happening this week, which speaks to both the art market and fair circuit in mid-2025 — as well as the singular experience Esther provides.
Tucked on the fair’s new top floor is Kogo gallery, which hails from Tartu, Estonia’s second-largest city and is one of the four returning participants. Founder Liina Raus intentionally brought works by Eike Eplik, a Baltic sculptor who’s interested in the intersection of biodiversity and classical materials, like clay and metal. The artist is gaining traction in Europe but hasn’t quite implanted herself into the mechanics of the United States market, and the works were also easy to transport into the city, explained Raus.
Sans Titre, which regularly shows at Independent and Art Basel, selected Esther as their one New York fair because “the idea of domesticity is important to our gallery, and showing in this kind of house space speaks to our DNA.” They brought small paintings by Jessy Razafimandimby rendered on pillow cases and other household surfaces.
Domestic spaces often beckon smaller art (which also fits in with market trends as of late), but indeed many of the works on display are diminutive in scale: Wenjue’s 12-by-8-inch canvases at Bank, or Will Thurman’s even smaller paintings at Gallery Quynh from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. You know, the kind that can fit in suitcases, which, in fact, is how quite a few international dealers brought the works into the country. With the confusing US tariffs on contemporary art, as well as the rise of shipping costs and a soft market, gallerists are thinking in crafty ways to support their artists while maintaining their bottom line.
But that’s all in concert with the ethos of Esther. As Sargent’s Daughters founder Allegra LaViola explains: “There’s a real kind of scrappy community feel to it. It’s an off-beat, quirkier thing, because they’re not trying to be a competitor to a traditional art fair. That’s exciting — because it’s authentic.”