In the flourishing and increasingly international ecosystem of CDMX Art Week, which is anchored to some degree by ZONAMACO, other fairs have carved out space, providing alternative platforms for younger artists and galleries to present their work in Mexico’s capital. On Thursday, February 6, Feria Material and Salón ACME each opened to VIPs before welcoming the general public later in the day.
Feria Material had already set the tone for the week with its Material Monday, an initiative that saw the city’s most interesting up-and-coming galleries opening in unison. This year, the itinerary stretched from Roma Norte to Novarte and Roma Sur, creating a dynamic route through the city’s evolving gallery landscape. The night culminated in a party organized in collaboration with New York artist-run space Beverly’s Platform, which took over an old club in Roma Sur.
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For Thursday’s opening, many of these galleries were prepared to present a strong selection of their programs at the fair, with aisles packed from the first view at 10 a.m. through to the evening. While interest remained high throughout the day, galleries reported mixed sales results, and some exhibitors had to devise creative solutions to navigate customs delays.
Early sales were recorded by the experimental gallery General Expenses, which, positioned right at the entrance on the ground floor, featured an intriguing yet psychologically intense new painting by Catherine Mullican alongside works by Magdalena Petroni, Philip Hinge, Wendy Cabrera Rubio, Antonio Vidal and Roger Muñoz, all priced in the $2,000-$7,000 range. Standing out in the booth was a provocative sculptural parody of Brancusi’s Brâncuși’s Head by Mexican artist Marek Wolfryd, who also opened his solo show at the gallery this week. Prosaically placed in the metal basket of a supermarket cart, Wolfryd’s Brancusi replica takes on the commercialization and commodification inherent in the endless circulation of iconic art objects. General Expenses’ director, Ricardo Diaque, told Observer that they secured a couple of sales on the first day but were hoping to close more and rehang the booth with fresh works in the coming days.
Another key player in Mexico City’s younger, more experimental scene, Lodos, experienced a steady influx of collectors throughout the morning. At the center of the booth were two striking new humanoid sculptures by Mexican artist Berenice Olmedo, with the smaller (Evaristo, 2025) acquired by a private collection during the preview and the larger (Eulalia, 2025) currently on hold for a Mexico-based foundation. Working at the intersection of art, medical technologies and biopolitics, Olmedo has garnered increasing institutional interest in recent years, accompanied by rising prices. Her solo presentation at Kunsthalle Basel a few years ago first brought her to the attention of collectors, museums, and biennial curators alike. Engaging with obsolete medical tools such as prostheses that have outlived their function, Olmedo interrogates notions of marginalized bodies—human or otherwise—while questioning the standards that define health, normalcy and disability.
The Puerto Rican gallery Embajada, a fair veteran since the early editions, was clearly satisfied with the Day 1 turnout. The gallery reported multiple sales of Jonathan Torres’ densely textured canvases and three-dimensional paintings, priced between $4,000 and $8,000, presented alongside works by CADABRA, Ada del Pilar Ortiz and Danny Pabon. Also featured in the booth were two new installations by Claudia Peña Salinas, one of the gallery’s longtime artists.
The Canadian gallery Pangée also had a strong first day, successfully placing a full series of six drawings from Bronson Smillie’s Felt Drawing series (2024) with Scotiabank (Canada), which will now join the bank’s Art Program collection. Additionally, the gallery placed all three of Russell Banx’s works into private collections.
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Another Canadian gallery, Patel Brown from Toronto, also saw solid sales, placing works by Marigold Santos along with significant pieces by Luke Painter and Kyle Alden Martens. “Material fair opening was amazing with a lot of international collectors from the U.S., Europe and Asia,” said co-owner Devan Patel. “Works have been placed in great private collections as well as museum and corporate collections. We deliberately did not send previews for the fair to see the response in person, which has been excellent!”
As shipping costs and logistical hurdles continue to soar, and both dealers and collectors grappled with the new Trump tariffs, small-scale artworks—often limited to cabin luggage size—are becoming increasingly popular… so much so that the Trump administration years may be remembered in art history as the era of intimate-scale paintings.
Material is probably the best place to find some of these small-scale works, and this year, collectors can find true gems at reasonable prices that are easy to pack up and bring home in a suitcase. Among them are Emiliano De Ezkauriatza’s psychedelic small paintings on shaped wood, which unfold colorful worlds and narratives within worlds. Presented by Galería Mascota, these works are priced in the low thousands and measure under 20 inches. Another standout is the intimate photo impressions on clay by Venezuelan-born, L.A.-based artist Lascia Farrow, presented by the London gallery Les Bains, with prices under $4,000.
For its debut at Material, Milan-based gallery EastContemporary is showing a similarly suitcase-friendly selection. The booth featured a delicately crafted new textile-based series by Eliška Konečná, displayed in dialogue with mixed-media psychedelic works by Mara Verhoogt inspired by Romanian folklore. Despite the rising profiles of both artists, all works are priced under $4,000.
Small-scale works are also an advantage for dealers, many of whom travel to the fair with only a suitcase to sidestep the usual complications with Mexican customs. This year, those challenges were particularly frustrating—some dealers had to improvise in their booths after their shipments were delayed, stuck in the seemingly endless bureaucracy that is customs processing.
Chicago-based Povos resorted to hanging only the frames of Isabella Mellado’s large-scale, tarot-inspired paintings. With the works still stuck in customs as of Thursday, Mellado turned the situation into an impromptu performance, repainting their black shadows inside the empty frames throughout the opening day. The result was an interactive and dynamic experience that invited collectors and visitors to engage directly with the process behind her art. “After ten days of struggling with FedEx and customs and infinite delays that didn’t make any sense, we were expecting the delivery of the works the morning of the fair opening. When that again fell through, my gallery partner Winston came up with a smart solution,” Povos owner Lucca Colombelli told Observer. “It all depended on Isabella. Despite all the pressure and disappointment, she did something brave and vulnerable. When I was unsure what to do, it’s good to know your partners, artists and friends have it covered. I’m proud of Isabella and the whole team for pulling this off and for staying calm and focused in such a difficult moment for our gallery.”
Meanwhile, Lima and Madrid-based gallery Ginsberg + Tzu was forced to completely improvise its booth after its original presentation remained stuck in Panama, inviting two local artists, Julio Julio Mutadamas and Shirley Villavicenzio Pizango, to step in. The gamble paid off: the black clay vessels by the young Mutadamas (b. 2001) quickly attracted collector interest, with several pieces selling in the first hours in the $1,500-$2,500 range. Using iconic material from Oaxaca, the artist explores the tensions between cultural value and racism in Mexico, interrogating the contradiction between the high regard for indigenous craftsmanship and the continued marginalization of brown-skinned and indigenous people.
Despite the challenges with shipping and the complexities of the market, other exhibitors pressed ahead with more curated and experimental presentations in the hopes of attracting the attention of the numerous museum groups in town this week.
The Mexico City- and New York-based gallery JO-HS presented at Feria Material a conceptual and installation-based selection of pieces by Mexican artist Rodrigo Red Sandoval. Working with metal profiles and polished industrial elements, Red Sandoval examines how complex infrastructural systems regulate and influence societal behaviors and existential choices. By emphasizing that objects are never neutral, he exposes the ways in which infrastructures, industrial constructions and design shape and redefine our interactions with the environment.
Like several galleries this year, JO-HS ambitiously took on the challenge of exhibiting at both fairs. “At this year’s ZONAMACO and Material, we chose to shine a spotlight on our ongoing dedication to showcasing the talent of Mexican artists,” Elisabeth Johs told Observer. “Through a solo presentation at Material featuring the compelling work of Rodrigo Red Sandoval and a group presentation at ZONAMACO, we sought to highlight the diversity and innovation within the contemporary Mexican art scene.”
Hyper-curated and awash in shades of pink, the booth of Sálon Silicón—a young gallery focused on queer art that has rapidly established itself in Mexico City’s flourishing scene—stood out for its strong aesthetic direction. At Feria Material, the gallery presented a tightly curated selection of works by emerging talents from the local scene and beyond, including Romeo Gómez López, Ángela Ferrari, Karl Frías García, Akan Hernández, Betty Árbol, Sandra Blow, Ileana Moreno, Kristin Reger, Sofía Hinojosa, Edgar García Ruiz, Santiago Mora and John R. Thompson.
Nearby, New York gallery Swivel, which is also presenting at both ZONAMACO and Material, is making its Mexico debut with the work of highly sought-after young artist Amy Bravo, following her recent sold-out show in New York. Standing stoically in about-face, a series of curious wall-hanging sculptural characters await instructions from a mysterious anthropomorphic creature on the floor, as Bravo continues her identitarian and sentimental exploration of her Cuban lineage through ancestral symbologies, myths and folklore. While the latter work found an international buyer before the fair, the gallery later placed two of the wall pieces, priced at $7,500 and reported strong institutional and collector interest in the others.
Another well-known New York player, Management, presented a solo booth at Material featuring works by Vladislav Markov. Founder Anton Svyatsky was pleased with the response, telling Observer that the booth attracted interest from several institutions and that one of the works is currently on hold for a local museum.
Colombia’s presence at Material was particularly strong this year, with several new galleries from the country making their debuts, signaling another growing scene worth following. One of the most dynamic spaces to emerge in recent years, Bogotá-based Sketch, returned to Material and reported sales of works by Andrés Quintero and Samuel Lasso. “The opening day was fantastic; many important collectors and institutions visited,” said Liz Caballero. “We sold to private collections in Monterrey, New York and Guatemala.”
This year’s fair also featured a wave of new artist-run and independent spaces from across Mexico. Among them, Azul Arena from Chihuahua presented striking mural paintings by LxSDos, a duo of artists from El Paso working at the intersection of street art and guerrilla art while drawing inspiration from the region’s popular culture and traditions.
Another compelling project bridging Mexico and Ukraine was presented by Yuntidudi, featuring works created by Oaxaca-born artist Rolando Hernández in collaboration with Ukrainian artist Dmytro Bereziuk. Co-produced with the Ukrainian Institute in Mexico City, the booth showcased hybrid flutes that fuse Ukrainian and Mexican (specifically Mixteca Alta Oaxaqueña) traditions into a single instrument and sound, offering a cross-cultural dialogue through music. Also on view was a video and multimedia work by Hernández that traces his challenging journey across some of today’s most politically charged borders, including the one between Poland and Ukraine and the border between Israel and Palestine.
Despite the strength of the presentations, overall sales appeared slower on Material’s first day. Dealers, however, remained optimistic and largely satisfied, even with only a handful of sales finalized by the end of the opening day. By now, most are accustomed to the market’s post-pandemic readjustment, where the rapid sellouts of the Covid-era boom feel increasingly like a distant memory.
Salón ACME offered a platform for creativity in a broader sense
Salón ACME, since its founding in 2013, has established itself as an artist-driven platform dedicated to providing visibility, momentum and diffusion to emerging creators. Now in its 12th edition, Acme’s Open Call section features seventy-nine emerging artists from Mexico, Latin America and beyond, selected from 1,800 applications. “We are very excited to open our doors,” the fair’s director, Ana Castella, told Observer ahead of the opening day. “We are looking forward to the guest state section with a focus on Veracruz; we will not only enjoy the exhibition with artists from the region but also with live music from Los Cojolites and a special gastronomic guest: Luis ‘Guero’ Palmeros, among many other sections and presentations! It is truly an art celebration!”
Curated by Rafael Toriz, the Veracruz section presents a heterogeneous exhibition, “Contours of a Hallucinatory Boat,” structured like a fandango, as described in the curatorial text. The exhibition aims to evoke the chaotic harmony of the coffee plantation while celebrating the depth, richness and plurality of the Veracruz artistic scene.
In the Patio section, invited artist Julieta Gil created an immersive installation that explores ideas of anti-monuments in vegetative oases, mapping urban greenery from her walks through the surrounding areas. Meanwhile, the Bodega section hosts the exhibition “From Bed to Living Room,” conceived by editor and essayist Enrique Giner de los Ríos. Featuring works by twenty-one artists, the show examines the domestic journey not just as a collection of personal and intimate moments but as a framework for interrogating the network of relationships between the self and its surroundings. The exhibition proposes that we all, in some way, shape, design and sculpt our existential and performative spaces through the practice of emotional interior design.
Alongside independent artists, established galleries are also embracing ACME’s more dynamic and less financially demanding platform. Among them is Berlin-based Galerie Kornfeld, which took over one of the rooms with a curated presentation, “Riding the Slag to Shine,” by Berlin artist Susanne Roewer. The exhibition explores the complexities of progress and colonization, centering on the figure of La Malinche, who, as a translator and confidante of Hernán Cortés, played a decisive role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Roewer’s multilayered presentation incorporates actual waste products, combining slag from San Luis Potosí with a glass-like industrial byproduct that remained in Mexico and silver that was extracted in vast quantities and transported to Europe and Asia. Completing the project, a fresco by Mexican painter Gonzalo García engages in a dialogue that transcends geographical and historical boundaries.
The gallery’s owner, Alfred Kornfeld, had this to say about the fair: “Salón ACME has established itself as one of the most unique and inspiring platforms for contemporary art, fostering deep connections between artists, curators and audiences beyond the conventional structure of an art fair.”
On the first day, the gallery placed two out of three editions of Roewer’s striking silver-plated bronze sculpture Saint Barbara (€3,800 each) alongside one of her intricate drawings (€900). Gonzalo García’s expressive painting (€3,900) also found a new home. The artist is set to make his Berlin debut at the gallery on March 1 as part of a group exhibition curated by Nina Mdivani.
Feria Material and Salón ACME continue through Sunday, February 9.
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