Independent Art Fair Bets on a New Waterfront Home at Pier 36, With SO–IL Design and Site-Wide Sculpture
Independent Art Fair is retooling its New York edition around a new address: Pier 36 on the Lower East Side. The move comes with a fresh exhibition design by Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu (SO–IL), the architecture studio known for its crisp, materially attentive interventions. According to a release, SO–IL’s work will focus on the venue’s exterior, aiming to strengthen “the fair’s integration with its Lower East Side surroundings.”
The fair is also introducing, for the first time, sculptural installations distributed throughout the event. Among the highlights are works by American artist Gretchen Bender (1951–2004), presented by Sprüth Magers, and by New Zealand artist Francis Upritchard (b. 1976), presented by Anton Kern Gallery. At the entrance, Independent has commissioned Greek artist Nikolas Ventourakis (b. 1990) — shown via Callirrhoë — to create an installation that draws on his photographs of trash heaps, setting a pointed, street-level tone before visitors even step inside.
Independent founder Elizabeth Dee framed the Pier 36 shift as an opportunity to recalibrate what an art fair can look like in New York. “This is going to be an extraordinary year for Independent,” Dee told ARTnews in an email. “Moving to Pier 36 has given us the chance to shake things up. The exhibition design, the number of new solo commissions, New York debuts, artists with institutional representation, and a few surprises will exceed people’s high expectations for what Independent can achieve and how fairs might model our work in the future.”
While Independent has long positioned itself as a fair that favors tightly conceived presentations over sprawling booth grids, the Pier 36 edition signals a more overt engagement with the city around it — not only through SO–IL’s exterior-focused approach, but also through the decision to place sculpture across the fair rather than confining three-dimensional work to individual stands.
The exhibitor roster spans a wide geographic range, with galleries arriving from New York and Los Angeles to Berlin, Dublin, Prague, Reykjavik, Seoul, and Tokyo. The list includes, among others, Almeida & Dale x David Nolan Gallery (São Paulo; New York) presenting Chakaia Booker and Miguel Rio Branco; Corbett vs. Dempsey (Chicago) with David Hartt and Gregg Bordowitz; i8 Gallery (Reykjavik) with Arna Óttarsdóttir; Kiang Malingue (Hong Kong, New York) with Tseng Chien-Ying; and Tomio Koyama Gallery (Tokyo) with Rika Minamitani.
Independent’s 2026 edition also makes room for presentations that blur the line between art, design, and fashion, including Comme Des Garçons (Paris) with Rei Kawakubo. Elsewhere, the fair’s emphasis on solo and tightly edited group presentations is reflected in a slate of artists marked as new or featured debuts across participating galleries.
With Pier 36 as its stage, Independent appears to be testing how much an art fair can behave like an exhibition — one that begins at the threshold, uses architecture as a framing device, and treats sculpture as a connective tissue rather than an afterthought. If the fair’s new commissions and site-wide installations land as intended, the Lower East Side waterfront may become more than a backdrop: it could be part of the argument.
Selected exhibitors include 12.26 (Dallas), A Lighthouse called Kanata (Tokyo), Abattoir Gallery (Cleveland), Buchmann Galerie (Berlin), Callirrhoë (Athens), Fredericks & Freiser (New York), James Fuentes (New York, Los Angeles), Hostler Burrows (New York, Los Angeles), Hunt Kastner (Prague), Interval (London), Kerlin Gallery (Dublin), Anton Kern Gallery (New York), David Kordansky Gallery (Los Angeles, New York), Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (Berlin), Jane Lombard Gallery (New York), Moskowitz Bayse (Los Angeles), Patel Brown (Toronto, Montreal), and more.
