In the 10th-floor lobby, a resplendent installation composed of recycled and upcycled blankets and textiles is on view. Replete with floral details and snaking branches, artist Jeila Gueramian’s installation, titled Belly of the Beast and curated by Emily McElwreath and Evan Pepper, also features a cave-like space in which visitors can indulge in a moment of quiet meditation. The piece, which extends in bits and pieces into the adjacent elevator bank, also incorporates lights, sound, and various kinetic elements.

Artist Kate Klingbeil’s first solo show at Spring/Break considers “what lies below the surface,” as the artist told ARTnews. Her acrylic, watercolor, and oil paintings and clay sculpture, which were inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, depict dizzying systems of roots and bodies. Klingbeil explained that the show “comes together to create a picture of the psyche,” and she said more than half the works on view were sold by midday at the VIP preview. 

One of the most overtly political booths at the fair is that of artist Valery Jung Estabrook, who has set up a miniature nostalgia shop where she is selling “Impeach Mint” coins (pictured here) depicting figures and events associated with the Trump administration. Inspired by the White House’s release of currency commemorating the “peace talks” with North Korea, the artist’s coins feature quotes from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Paul Manafort, Rudy Giuliani, and others. The whole set is on sale for $1,200, and individual coins range in price from $90 to $250.

An exhibition called “Tender Tending” features works by artist Destiny Belgrave, whose work draws on her experience as a Black Caribbean-American woman. For this show, curated by Tess Sol Schwab, Belgrave is presenting pieces depicting her family members and childhood memories. On view are cutouts and collages, some of which are based on photographs, and digital prints on fabric. Sol Schwab said that the show “pays homage to the people [the artist] cares about most.”

Artist Adam Handler, a newcomer to the Spring/Break Art Show, is showing oil and pencil on canvas works with CB Gallery, of Katonah, New York. Handler’s quirky paintings feature images of women, ghosts, and tulips, and gallerist Christopher Brescia told ARTnews that the artist’s pieces are “really joyful,” showing an “excess of color, an excess of feeling, an excess of emotion.” Within the fair’s first few hours, Brescia had sold one of Handler’s small ghost paintings for $450.

A vibrant group exhibition titled “Tableau Vivant,” curated by Anna Cone and Victoria Udondian, subverts the look of Baroque period rooms with to focus on decidedly political topics—including postcolonialism, feminism, and queer issues. With textile-based works by Udondian, hand-beaded and embroidered wall pieces and sculptures by Max Colby, embroidery paintings by Kirstin Lamb, and installations by Cone, the show dazzles with its bold reds, pinks, and golds. Colby said that their works in the show, which hang from the booth’s walls and sit on delicate tables in the space, reference religious and funerary ceremonies, and explore the gendered histories of various materials.

Artist David B. Frye has focused his presentation around the biblical myth of the golden calf to explore the ways people can cling to “false idols” and “old traditions” in times of uncertainty. The presentation, which is set against a bright red wall painting of a barn’s exterior, includes acrylic works on wood panels displayed in hand-carved frames, some of them shaped like a bull. At its center is a mechanical contraction, which, when operated by the artist, makes the wooden hands of an attached sculpture move along the udder of large-scale bull frame.

Artist Jess Bass, a first-time exhibitor at Spring/Break, is showing an intimate presentation titled “See/Saw,” curated by Nadia Tahoun. For her booth featuring black-and-white works, Bass created two- and three-dimensional wide-eyed figures using papier-mâché and cardboard. The works—one of which gracefully spins in place—represent visualizations of symptoms of vertigo, according to the artist, who said the pieces reflect the distress of the current political moment.

Artist Azikiwe Mohammed has reimagined the storied Subway Lounge, a basement space at the Summers Hotel in Jackson, Mississippi. The venue hosted jazz and blues concerts from the 1980s to 2004, when the hotel was demolished, and Mohammed said that his installation focuses on the ways “Black people are denied public space and shoved into private space,” and what happens when “outside concerns come inside.” The show includes paintings, bespoke lighting, carpeting, and a central table where wood board figures are seated so as to demonstrate the ways in which the Subway Lounge represented “making a space of comfort.”

“The Infinite Gyre,” curated by Tansy Xiao and featuring large-scale works by artists Michael A. Robinson and Sizhu Li, is a futuristic environment ruled by technology. Robinson’s monumental light fixture The Origin of Ideas (pictured here) illuminates only a tangled web of cords, and Li’s site-specific installation, titled What Is WATT, is made with aluminum sheets, fans, light bulbs, and other materials.

One of this year’s most immersive outings is a candy-colored installation created by artist Super Future Kid (Steffi Homa) and organized by curator Ché Morales and the Miami-based Mindy Solomon Gallery. Having witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall as an eight-year-old child, Homa’s art has been influenced by the biomorphic Western toys, video games, and cartoons. Inspired by the medieval fairy tale “The Land of Cockaigne,” Homa has created a space where visitors can rest atop hand-sewn beanbag chairs and admire the artist’s electrically colored paintings—after they’ve walked through a roofed structure made of gingerbread held together by expanding foam, crossed 2,450 pounds of salt spread on the floor, and traversed a foot bridge hovering above a river of hot pink water, that is.

A bed constructed of chicken wire, safety pins, zip ties, and newspaper clippings in Hebrew and English figures in a showing of Caron Tabb’s work presented by Boston’s Beacon Gallery. In the presentation, Tabb chronicles her personal and familial immigrant experience, while also “shining a light on how immigrants have made it possible for us to a joy this excess economy of ours,” the artist said.

Artist Takashi Horisaki’s work #instabonsai (2016–19) figures in the joint exhibition “Neo-Ornamentalist Redux,” curated by Nina Horisaki-Christens. Each piece in the presentation is concerned with the intersections of consumerism, colonialism, and image-sharing technology. Horisaki’s works feature ceramics and cacti, which Horisaki-Christens said hints at how the “kind of plants we have shifts with the lifestyle culture we see on Instagram.”

In “A Loverboy’s Tale,” curated Anne-Laure Lemaitre, Asif Hoque is showing oil, linen, and charcoal works that aim to subvert longstanding notions of masculinity through depictions of sinuous male forms. The titular work, a painting of a brown cherub, was sold for $1,800. “This Cupid became the main character while I built these paintings,” the Brooklyn-based painter said.

In this presentation curated by Dawne Langford, viewers step into a multimedia installation by Rachel Schmidt encompassing a video and sculpture created with single-use consumer items: cast tissue paper, plastics, and found and recycled objects. “I’m trying to turn my practice into a green space,” Schmidt explained. Against the wall, projections of a Scotish isle and the Kansas countryside illuminate the din.

Repurposed night-lights illuminate artist Corey Escoto’s booth, curated by Casey Droege. According to Droege, the series, constructed from found materials cast in resin, is about “countering the current culture of fear.”

In “Gimme Gimme, Gimme More,” curated by Dan Halm, artist Colin J. Radcliffe explores queer intimacy through his playful series of small-scaled ceramics representing past partners (one of which is pictured here). Each sculpture bares tiny trademarks of the lover. Collectively, the presentation chronicles Radcliffe’s romantic adventure and failures, with each ceramic valued at $800.

Viewers are invited to recline within Bobby Anspach’s interactive installation Place for Continuous Eye Contact (2020), curated by Eizabeth Ferrer and the Brooklyn-based art center BRIC. While inside the dome-like structure decorated in multicolored pompoms and LED lights, participants covered one eye with a patch while gazing into a small mirror above. The goal, Anspach explained, was to maintain continuous eye with yourself while listening to an ambient score composed by Matthew Robert Cooper. For some lucky visitors, a meditative state followed.

Artist Graham Akins’s It Was Her 90th Birthday, and the Exhaust Fan Smelled Like a Chip Gif (2019) marries video loops, a flat-screen TV monitor, and 3D graphics in an attempt to reconstruct the fleeting memory of his grandmother’s birthday party. He describes the final product as a “spatial memory dome.” The work figures in “Möbius Loop,” a joint exhibition curated by Anna Evtiugina and Alina Kryukova.