Art for Giving Your Eyes A Place to Rest

Fresh contemporary artworks to help recover from fair week overstimulation

Good morning and welcome to the post-fair week exhale!

We have many new subscribers since last week’s issue, so I want to take a moment to say hi and welcome. Every week, I share a curated, punchy selection of contemporary art (with prices!) by emerging artists whose practices I am discovering and following. If you are interested in buying one of the works below or have a question, just reply to this email.

Every fourth issue is free, and in the three weeks between, the artwork selections are reserved for paid subscribers. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to support the research and curatorial work behind this publication, and to receive every artist selection each week.

For everyone who successfully participated in the fairs last week, congratulations! Are you digging out of your willfully ignored inboxes as well? I heard a lot of good news on booths as I walked around Independent, NADA, Frieze, Future, and 1-54. Overall it seemed like sales were slower but still closing, and I’m gratified to hear so many people’s collections were enriched by acquisitions last week.

My sister and I have this saying (usually applied to painfully overdecorated spaces) that “our eyes have nowhere to rest”. This saying also applies to art fairs. At the end of the week, you have seen hundreds of works in a compressed window, standing in booths with crowds and noise and visual stimulation.

Fairs are genuinely one of the best ways to discover the most art in the least amount of time, and they are also completely the wrong conditions for actually absorbing any of it. So I have decided that this week’s issue is our collective recovery issue. The strongest collections begin with paying attention and that attention is always recoverable (just ask my inbox).

Veronika Pausova’s paintings are each a visual puzzle; Ren Light Pan’s process remains a mystery; Zuriel Waters we NEED to see detail images of the sewn canvases; and just try to convince me that your mind isn’t boggled by the CAST GLASS Alice Gong Xiaowen piece made from found photo albums (hot tip: she’s showing at Art Basel next month).

I could go on about the reasons I have included each of the works below, but I’ll leave the rest to your own curiosity and discovery. Reach out and let me know which artworks you would like to know more about. I can’t wait to hear what you think. Enjoy!

Ren Light Pan

palm (0206), 2025

Ink, water, infrared light and canvas

34 x 24 inches

$7,000

Veronika Pausova

Dwelling (Anchors), 2026

Oil on canvas

29 x 25 inches

$12,500

Zuriel Waters

Untitled, April, 2026

Pigment dispersion and acrylic on sewn canvas

44 x 84 inches

$12,000

Alice Gong Xiaowen

Untitled, 2026

Cast glass

9.5 x 7.25 x 0.75 inches

$3,400

Gabe Cortese

A Premonition, 2026

Oil on panel

16 x 16 inches

$5,500 + $200 frame

Vincent Pocsik

Hand with Purple Cone Flower, 2026

Carved walnut, bronze

14 x 6 ¾ x 4 ½ inches

$8,500

Dan Perkins

Lunar Void, 2026

Oil on panel

36 x 60 inches

$11,000

Rives Granade

Darkness Beginning to Trace the Light, 2025

Clay scratchboard

24 x 18 inches

$6,200

Emily Ponsonby

Salvia Nemorosa, 2026

Beeswax and oil on panel

8 1/2 x 11 inches

$6,800

Maude Maris

Petit Chien Blanc, 2026

Oil on canvas

13 x 9 1/2 inches

$3,600

Molly Rose Lieberman

The wind wakes me up, 2025

Acrylic, oil, cold wax, inkjet print, photograph on linen in artist’s frame

26⅛ x 26⅝ inches

$15,000

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