A mood of conviviality reigned at the high-energy opening of the San Francisco Art Fair on 17 April, with dealers, artists, collectors, curators and celebrities in attendance. The fair, which continued until 20 April at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, rebranded as the San Francisco Art Fair last year after previously being known as ArtMrkt San Francisco.
“Each time we return we’re reminded of the deep commitment the region has to their artists. San Francisco shows up. The sense of community is what makes this city truly unique,” says Kelly Freeman, the director of Art Market Productions, which runs the fair.
The fair featured 88 exhibitors this year, with a strong contingent from the East Bay, including the Oakland-based galleries pt.2 (which had four spaces throughout the fair) and Johansson Projects, as well as Good Mother Gallery, which has locations in Oakland and Los Angeles. The fair also devoted stands to alternative spaces and models, including the global residency programme the Alternative Art School and the Portland-based artist-run space after/time Collective Gallery, among others.
The artist Marc Horowitz (in white shirt) works in the DeBoer Gallery at the 2025 San Francisco Art Fair Photography by Drew Bird, Courtesy of Art Market Productions
The artist Marc Horowitz had a solo stand with the Los Angeles-based DeBoer Gallery, which was in utter disarray as he used the space as a studio throughout the run of the fair. The artist nailed and stapled large unstretched canvases featuring bright abstract compositions to the walls; water bottles and a price list hand-scrawled on a mangled piece of carboard littered the table. Despite the satirical tone of his “performance on laziness”, several of the paintings sold for $25,000 and up.
The Alternative Art School, which was co-founded by Nato Thompson (AMP’s artistic director) and the artist Amber Imrie, showcased works by four artist-members: Imrie, Kellie O’Dempsey, Victoria Loren Miller and Stacey Goodman. “We wanted to show some of our artists’ work as a way to introduce broader audiences to the greater work we do,” said Imrie.
The fair’s programming pulled in many local partners, including a Friday night party co-hosted by the Further Triennial, a Bay Area-wide recurring exhibition launching in 2027, at the downtown hotel The Jay, with wine donated by the art-filled winery Donum Estate. Founded by the philanthropist Robin Wright, the Further Triennial has already raised more than $1m for its inaugural edition and partnered with just about every art institution in the region. On Saturday the director and chief curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Ali Gass, led a studio visit with the artist Masako Miki, whose solo exhibition at the ICA SF Midnight March opens 16 May.
Alessandro Gallo, The Fool, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Duane Reed Gallery
Meanwhile, at the fair, dealers reported healthy sales of works priced from a few hundred dollars to the lower five figures. The closely-watched local gallery Micki Meng gave 100% of the proceeds from its stand to Art into Acres, the artist-founded environmental non-profit. The walls were lined with small works priced at $500 each by Bay Area artists and members of the community, including SFMoMA board president Robert Fisher, the museum’s associate curator of painting and sculpture Nancy Lim, the artists Michelle Yi Martin and Drew Bennett, and others.
The St Louis-based Duane Reed Gallery sold six tarot-inspired ceramic works by artist Alessandro Gallo for $7000 each. The local dealer Eleanor Harwood sold works for prices ranging from $2,400 to $12,500, the latter for one of Mary Finlayson’s glass tile still life mosaics. Studio Shop Gallery, based just south of San Francisco in Burlingame, sold two mixed-media, Delft-inspired works from Rob Strati’s Fragmented series for $15,500 and $20,500. The local powerhouse gallery Jessica Silverman reported nearly a dozen sales, including eight works by Clare Rojas ranging from $14,000 for an oil-on-paper work to $45,000 for the new painting Spiraling Time (2025).
Clare Rojas, Woman’s Head in the Fern, 2025 Photo: Phillip Maisel. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco
Several international galleries reported strong sales, too. The Paris-based Sobering Galerie sold ten works for prices between €1,700 and €3,900 ($1,900-$4,400). Gallery Playlist, from Busan, South Korea, sold nine ceramic works by Jung Jisook for prices ranging from $780 to $3,600. The German space coGALERIE sold seven works, including a bronze by Olivier Messas for $3,400. The London-based gallery TAG Fine Arts placed seven works, ranging from $650 for several of Neil Carroll’s still lifes to $8,500 for a new painting by Michael Azgour. Yiwei Gallery, which has spaces in Los Angeles and Wuhan, China, sold a four-panel painting from its solo booth of works by Liu Tianlian for a price in the range of $40,000.
Commenting on the fair’s strengths, Freeman adds: “The spirit of collaboration, innovation and social consciousness is core to what we aim to highlight at the fair.”
