New York's Art on Paper fair draws a fuzzy line between its titular medium and everything else

The Art on Paper fair is back at Pier 36 in Lower Manhattan for its 11th edition, which kicked off with a VIP preview on Thursday evening (4 September). The medium-specific fair features 81 exhibitors from around the world this year; its organisers, Art Market Productions, have also programmed a full calendar of interactive events and workshops, including the return of Booksmart Fair. This fair-within-the-fair organised in partnership with the Center for Book Arts champions the handmade artist's book and a wide range of printed materials created by artists, institutions and independent presses.

This year’s Art on Paper features a lively mélange of offerings in the titular medium. Standouts include tenderly crafted tabletop, plant-like sculptures by Nina Katchadourian, which are presented by Pace Gallery, and Mary Beth Edelson’s Story Gathering Boxes, on Accola Griefen Fine Art's stand, a social practice project from the early 1970s that asks visitors to contribute handwritten responses to prompts about identity, gender and immigration.

Some work at the fair skirts the brief a bit; several exhibitors are showing paintings, ceramics and other non-paper items. During Thursday's preview, one visitor was overheard asking: “Where’s the paper stuff?” Still, Art on Paper’s heart is in its distinctive focus on the endless and original manipulations of an ancient, ever-evolving substrate.

The artist Nicolas V. Sanchez, who rose to prominence by posting his hyperrealistic ballpoint pen sketchbook drawings to his 350,000 Instagram followers, has adapted his work for buyers who love the authentic, intimate feel of his pieces.

“I went to the New York Academy of Art, and my commute from my apartment to school was 40 minutes, so I sketched to pass the time,” he tells The Art Newspaper. “I started using that technique for commission work, and I would always do them in my sketchbooks and post my pages online, and then it just turned into people saying, 'Hey, how do I have that though?' People wanted to buy the whole sketchbook, but there's notes and phone numbers and doctor's appointments and social security numbers in there! So now I’m thinking of the sketchbook as just another way to matte and frame a drawing. It’s one drawing per sketchbook, framed. I kept it in the sketchbooks because it connects people to what they see online, and I wanted to offer a piece of my studio practice”.

Sanchez’s stand is filled with palm-sized notebooks pressed open under glass, revealing lush, jewel-like images that celebrate his Mexican American heritage. His renderings of cows, horses and fridge magnets act as nostalgic, devotional mementos.

On the stand of first-time exhibitor Fringe Gallery, the Seattle-born artist Rebecca Messier is showing gentle geometrical abstractions that belie the modest violence of their making with a needle and thread.

“These are all hand-sewn straight into the paper,” says Allison Cannella, a director at the gallery. “It’s a very meticulous process”. This is Messier’s first time showing outside of Telluride, Colorado, where both she and Fringe are based; her debut nods to Minimalist painting, with a piercing twist.

The Monira Foundation, in collaboration with Jersey City’s Mana Contemporary Art Center, has launched its first “full-scale collaboration” with Art on Paper after years of partnerships, according to Kristin DeAngelis, the senior director of strategy and operations at Mana Contemporary. Their joint stand which features artists affiliated with both organisations, including hand-printed faux wood panelling and houseplant cut-outs by the Brooklyn-based artist Anne Muntges, an illustrator and printmaker. “My work focuses on recreating the world as I experience it,” says Muntges.

The Oakland, California-based Cindy Lisica Gallery is showing frenetically bestial works by the San Francisco-based artist Andrea Bergen, whose handcut paper depictions of naughty, anarchic critters, dogs, pigeons and raccoons marry precision with boundless excess. In Fun Between Buns (2025), two monkeys go full "Lady and the Tramp" on a cheeseburger, a deviously delicious picture of teamwork incarnate.

• Art on Paper, until 7 September, Pier 36, Manhattan, New York