BARELY FAIR 2024 was the 4th iteration of the fair, and 3rd located at the Color Club venue in the Irving Park neighborhood of Chicago. 36 exhibitors including galleries, project spaces, and curatorial projects represented New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Tokyo, Ireland, Toronto, Montréal, Buenos Aires, Belgium, and more. Our full list of participants are below.
The 2024 fair also featured pop-up exhibitions in alignment with BARELY FAIR: Christina Ballantyne's See-Through Place, curated by Julius Caesar Gallery, 062 presented Remembering Thomas Kong, and Color Club exhibited Kristen Miciotta's Flowers of Flesh & Blood.
MINOR MATTERS symposium closed the fair with a series of panels featuring artists, gallerists, curators and other key contributors to the Chicago art world and beyond.
For more information on the symposium, please visit MINOR MATTERS, and to see work exhibited by galleries youc an view our documentation of the fair or visit the SPOTLIGHT page, which shares profiles of the artists presented by the galleries.
062
Chicago
Named after local zip code in Gwangju, South Korea, 062 is a non-profit art gallery in Chicago and is committed to the promotion of global art discourse. 062 is an open platform for international artists and cultural organizations. 062 supports the work of emerging and established artists through the dissemination of ideas, actions and conversations, and experimental exhibition formats.
april april
Pittsburgh
april april is an art gallery located in the Regent Square neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the borough of Wilkinsburg. The gallery represents and exhibits a comprehensive range of practices with an artist-driven curatorial sensibility. Founded by Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi as an apartment gallery, the project space was in Brooklyn, New York from 2021-24.
Askeaton Contemporary Arts
Gurt, Ireland
Since 2006, Askeaton Contemporary Arts commission, produce and exhibit contemporary art in the locale of a small town in County Limerick, Ireland. An artist residency programme situates Irish and international artists in the midst of Askeaton each summer, while thematic exhibitions, publications and events often occur. Through these methods, over one hundred artists projects have been realised.
Chris Andrews
Montréal
Chris Andrews is a contemporary art gallery in Montréal, Canada. The gallery opened in the summer of 2021, and operated out of a mixed use high-rise building until the end of 2022. In March 2023, the gallery moved to its current storefront location at 1660 Rue Villeray under the name Chris Andrews. The gallery's programme emerged from a desire to host dialogue between local and international artists.
Cleaner Gallery + Projects
Chicago
Cleaner Gallery + Projects is a contemporary art gallery in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. Starting off as artist studios with a window gallery, Cleaner now houses 2 galleries showing contemporary solo and group shows. We are committed to exhibiting artists who want to put on serious shows. We still have artist studios and a half pipe.
Cob Gallery
London
Founded in 2011, Cob has established its reputation due to its dedication to artists at the emergent stage of their careers. With a strong curatorial backbone, Cob’s core programming centres around a roster of UK-based artists; whilst simultaneously inviting international practitioners to exhibit in London.
COOPER COLE
Toronto
COOPER COLE is a contemporary art gallery located in Toronto, Canada established in 2011. The gallery exhibits and represents a diverse mix of Canadian and international artists at the emerging, mid-career, and established levels who show in museums and galleries globally. Cooper Cole curates up to fifteen exhibitions a year in our two gallery spaces, and we participate in major art fairs around the globe.
Devening Projects
Chicago
Established in 2007 by Chicago-based artist, curator and educator Dan Devening, Devening Projects features a diverse group of emerging and established international artists. Focused on site-specific installations and energetic artist pairings, Devening Projects is the anchor of a growing gallery scene on Chicago’s West Side.
DK Collection
Chicago
DK Collection, located in Chicago, contains works of artists, performers, and writers from different countries and different backgrounds including Europe—especially Poland—and representing South America, Mexico, Africa, USA, and other international regions. A hallmark of the collection is a focus on language.
Everybody
Tucson
Everybody is a gallery in Tucson, AZ that primarily works with emerging and perpetually-emerging artists. Its beginnings in Tucson started as a warehouse project space from 2016-2018, followed by an iteration in Chicago, IL from 2019-2020. Everybody’s activities have been featured by Newcity Art, Vulture, Contemporary Art Daily, ART news, Art Viewer, SFAQ, among others. Everybody is a member of the New Art Dealers Alliance.
free range
Chicago
free range is an artist's run space in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, Started in 2013 as a studio and project space, free range provides a gallery and performance space for artists of all stages in their career to experiment with new ideas and expand ways of thinking about and presenting their practice. Artists are given free rein to explore alternative methods of examining and challenging exhibition modes for their work.
Good Naked Gallery
New York City
Titled after a Seinfeld episode where Jerry’s girlfriend attempts to open a pickle jar and fix a bike in the buff, it is with levity and sincerity that Good Naked’s programming hovers around the intimate and awkward. The focus is on work that engages tactility, humor, movement, and play. Good Naked's exhibitions are responsive and generative, prioritizing space for new voices and dialogue amongst contemporary artists.
ILY2
Portland
Founded in 2020, ILY2 takes an experimental approach to working with emerging and mid-career artists to produce exhibitions, editions, projects, and fair presentations. The team grounds the program and its focused support of artists in decades of gallery, advisory, collections, and curatorial experience. ILY2’s 1,660 sq. ft. gallery is located in Portland’s Pearl District.
Kai Matsumiya
New York City
Kai Matsumiya operates with the belief that the contemporary art gallery has not caught up to the realities of art, and how art should thus live and breathe in its own times and terms. Experimentation for its own sake is celebrated for the purpose of encouraging failure; for it is failure which promotes possibilities, opportunities, and a defense of dignity. The gallery asserts the spirit as being vital as the program.
LambdaLambdaLambda
Prishtina, Kosovo
Founded in 2015 by Isabella Ritter and Katharina Schendl, LambdaLambdaLambda is the first international gallery for contemporary art in Prishtina. Its aim is to provide artists and the audience with an intimate and informal environment conducive to experimentation, discussion and learning, especially by bringing together international and local artists. LambdaLambdaLambda are the co-founders of LA MAISON DE RENDEZ-VOUS in Brussels.
Mariane Ibrahim
Chicago, Paris, & Mexico City
Seven years after launching her namesake gallery in Seattle, Mariane Ibrahim moved the space to Chicago in 2019. In September 2021, the gallery opened its inaugural European space in Paris and in 2023 it opened a third space in Mexico City. The gallery has hosted acclaimed exhibitions, with a founding focus on the African diaspora, from leading and emerging artists including Amoako Boafo, Yukimasa Ida, Peter Uka and Zohra Opoku.
MISAKO & ROSEN
Tokyo
Based in Tokyo, Japan, MISAKO & ROSEN represents 28 artists, half from Japan and half from abroad. Operating on the principle “Art is not a competition,” the program fosters collaboration and cooperation as an alternative to a profit-driven modality. In contrast to a mainstream contemporary art world indistinguishable from any other unregulated market, the gallery places an emphasis on the literal, favoring artists who do not shy away from humor. Abstraction and the scatalogical define us.
murmurs
Los Angeles
murmurs is an art space located in DTLA focused on championing experimental and emerging art practices. murmurs exists to challenge what is expected of an art gallery by providing a new model of a multifaceted platform for modalities of expression that have the power to transform reality.
OCHI
Los Angeles & Ketchum, ID
OCHI is a contemporary art gallery that represents a diverse roster of interdisciplinary artists, programming seamlessly between locations in the light industrial neighborhood of Sun Valley, Idaho and the Arlington Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. OCHI supports and contextualizes artists with experimental and emerging practices as they investigate the conceptual and material boundaries of visual art strategies.
Patel Brown
Toronto & Montréal
Patel Brown highlights alternative perspectives and encourages experimentation and innovation in both its programming and operations. Identifying gaps in representation and opportunities guided by collaboration and community; the gallery’s program looks to traditions in culture and identity, and how they are increasingly challenged by the globalized world.
Patient Info
Chicago
PATIENT INFO is an artist run space based in Chicago. Founded in 2019 and operating in a former dermatology office, the space allows for recontextualization and risk taking across media. Exhibitions at Patient Info are a collaborative exercise, creating an opportunity for artists to engage in the curatorial process while showcasing their work.
PATRON
Chicago
PATRON is a contemporary art gallery in Chicago created by Julia Fischbach and Emanuel Aguilar in 2015. PATRON is founded on the defining characteristics of a patron of the arts: a person chosen, named or honored as a special guardian, protector or supporter. With this foundation set as a cornerstone, the gallery hopes to help open new avenues for audiences to engage with and find access to contemporary art.
PIEDRAS
Buenos Aires
Founded by Rafael Beltrán and Santiago Gasquet in 2014 as an artist-run project, by 2018 PIEDRAS was a gallery. Now in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, the program features artists exploring the peripheries, flaws and interstices of the dominant discourses. Often focusing on gender issues, economy critique, and the performative power of everyday fictions, PIEDRAS presents an alternative where professionalism and joy converge.
PICA
Portland
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) supports the experiments of the most vital and provocative artists of our time. Our vision is international, intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and decidedly forward thinking (even when those explorations look back in history). PICA is unique among institutions for working right alongside artists at the increasingly blurry boundaries between forms and at the edge of new ideas.
Prairie
Chicago
Prairie is an independent exhibition space for contemporary art in Chicago, IL. Working in the long-tradition of artist-run spaces in the city, Prairie was established in 2017 by artists Jack Schneider and Tim Mann with the aim of creating a venue for emerging art and a platform for critical discourse.
P.A.D.
New York City
P.A.D. [Project Art Distribution] is an art exhibition space in historic SoHo (South of Houston) Arts District in New York City. It reflects the bustling economy of artists making, selling and promoting their artworks on the street year-round, weather permitting. The aim of the space is to platform small and editioned works by artists that are interested in embracing new contexts for exhibiting.
TATJANA PIETERS
Ghent
TATJANA PIETERS is an international gallery for contemporary art, located in a unique 400 m2 space in the emerging harbour area of Ghent. The gallery brings museum-like exhibitions with artists from different parts of the world and combines the promotion of young undiscovered Belgian and foreign talent with that of renowned older artists. Experimentation, the broadening of the mind, and social awareness are what drive this operation.
Tiny Table Gallery
Chicago
Tiny Table Gallery is a non-commercial, portable exhibition venue that displays small-scale sculpture. The gallery “space” consists of a single salesman sample table that is used to show curated series of artworks, one at a time. The table can easily travel between brick-and-mortar venues, outdoor parks, and anywhere that art should be. Our platform seeks to show intimate and often ephemeral work in convivial environments.
Weatherproof
Chicago
Weatherproof is a contemporary art gallery/curatorial umbrella founded in 2022, with an office space in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, and a vitrine space Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. The gallery's program focuses around allowing artists opportunities to present ambitious and challenging work in a site-responsive and collaborative manner, alongside exhibition-specific ephemera.