The second edition of Split Level, the upstart New York City art fair held in a high-end design showroom on Madison Avenue, returns this week with a slightly expanded roster of young galleries and a model designed to offer an alternative to the conventional white stand fair format.
Split Level developed out of founder Jaqueline Cedar’s gallery Good Naked, named for a joke from a Seinfeld episode, which she first ran out of a spare bedroom in her apartment in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, starting in 2019. (“I started the gallery because I didn't want another roommate,” she says.)
As an artist, Cedar started the project with an ethos of performance and collaboration, often inviting other artists into her home each month to paint murals. Just six months later, during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, she pivoted and began organising outdoor exhibitions in Brooklyn’s nearby Prospect Park, on trees and in the snow. As society reopened, that model shifted into Good Naked having a more itinerant programme, with Cedar collaborating with like-minded galleries, mostly in New York and Los Angeles, for exhibitions.
“The idea was always around bringing the art to the context that felt like it best fit the artist's vision,” Cedar tells The Art Newspaper.
Last year, she partnered with the Italian company Rimadesio to hold the first edition of Split Level in its Madison Avenue showroom over three days. Instead of traditional stands, exhibitors set up shop and displayed art across the showroom, in faux closets, bathrooms and across furniture displays. This year's edition of the fair, once again taking over the Rimadesio showroom, runs from 1 October to 3 October.
“Having started the gallery out of my apartment, I was very aware of the benefits of inviting people into a more residential environment—people stick around longer. It's more of a destination,” Cedar says. “Having the show in a showroom like that, with living room spaces and closet spaces, it felt very intimate in the way that I like to see art.”
Exhibitors place works on shelves and coffee tables, lean them against pieces of furniture or suspend them from the ceiling, giving the work a lived-in feel that is far removed from the white-cube conventions of a typical commercial art fair. Because of the limitations of the space—exhibitors can’t drill holes in the walls—“it yielded some really great experimentation in terms of displaying art in a home”, Cedar says of the first edition.
The fair has grown slightly in its second edition, to 17 galleries from 15 last year. Work is largely priced below $10,000, Cedar says, adding that she reached out to galleries she had previously collaborated with, or knew from participating in fairs such as Nada New York, Barely Fair and Future Fair, she says. This year’s exhibitors include 95 Gallon—a gallery run out of a roaming trash can—The Sphinx, Blah Blah Gallery, Artist Estate Studio, Below Grand and Spill 180, among others. The daughter of an actor, Cedar has organised performances throughout the duration of the fair in collaboration with the playwright Matthew Freeman, as well as some video and film programming.
“The exhibitors are all having to be very nimble and flexible in the way that they're thinking through sustainability in the art world at this moment, and we’re trying to highlight that in both the models of exhibitors and in the way that we're displaying,” Cedar says.
The fee structure for the fair offers two prices, one for a solo presentations and one for a two-artist stand. Cedar declines to share exact figures, but estimates that even the more expensive of the fees is around “a third to a fifth of the lowest price you would find at even a satellite fair”.
As for future editions of Split Level, Cedar says she is working with Rimadesio on an iteration of the fair at its Los Angeles location in late January 2027. Holding the fair just after or before a city's major fair week—such as the just-passed Armory Week in New York or the upcoming edition of Frieze Los Angeles in February—is a purposeful move, she adds.
“As much as I've enjoyed participating in satellite fairs over the years and gotten a lot out of those experiences, I think that we're so oversaturated so often throughout the calendar year with art events,” Cedar says. “I really wanted to provide an opportunity where there might be a tiny pause on the calendar, and people could really dedicate themselves to closer looking, slower conversations and spending more time.”
- Split Level, 1-3 October, Rimadesio, 102 Madison Avenue, New York
