Clio Art Fair has been able to stay small after more than a decade in operation, but when you walk into the Chelsea art show, it doesn’t feel that way.The self-styled “anti-fair,” which returned this week for the second of its two consecutive New York City fall editions through September 21, manages to fit 35 to 40 artists in the ground floor of 511 West 25th Street without feeling claustrophobic.That scale is important for Alessandro Berni, who founded the fair in 2014 to give artists outside the traditional art circuit — many of whom do not have the gallery representation required to participate in shows like Frieze or the Armory Show — an opportunity to exhibit their work during art fair season and make new connections with collectors and curators. “Clio was born to be small,” Berni told Hyperallergic. “Traditional fairs are always too large for the visitor, whose eye eventually becomes tired and desensitized. Offering too many works to see in a single day damages the elective dialogue that should emerge between artwork and viewer.”The opening of Clio Art Fair on September 4, 2025 That has proven to be a challenge as the fair has grown in popularity. This year, he received more than 500 submissions, almost double compared to previous years. In order to keep its size manageable while still allowing a mix of artists to show during the spring and fall art fair seasons, Berni split the fair into two editions held on separate weekends in May and September. He plans to continue that format into the future.But Berni said he won’t change the types of artists he includes in the fair, which is one of the few Manhattan art shows featuring independent artists. He also works to attract artists from around the world, which allows the fair to present works that have not been seen in the United States before.The lack of gallery representation keeps prices affordable. Artists pay a fee, roughly $1,500 or so, to participate, and have the option of hiring Berni’s gallery as a dealer to take care of shipping and handling (in which case the gallery takes 20% of the sale). Painter Margaret Koval displays a collection of eerie oil paintings of night street scenes. The fair’s intimate experience, where viewers come face to face with artists who are more than happy to explain their process and inspirations, contrasts with the impersonal nature of large-scale fairs filled with commercial galleries where dealers often act as intermediaries for the artists they represent.“Contemporary art, in recent years, has become an exclusive world, where artists are too often reduced to begging for elite approval,” Berni said. “We believe the great artist of the future will go underground, will remain clandestine, someone who creates because they obey an unshakable inner will. Success and wealth should count for nothing.”Fortunately, they still know how to party. At the opening of Clio’s first fall edition on September 4, artists from more than 20 countries, including Japan, Argentina, Taiwan, Greece, and Italy, milled about the floor as the public streamed inside. The fair has its share of longtime local artists, too. An Upper West Side mixed-media artist who gave her name as Pearl brought several photo collages she made of classic New York City architectural elements, like Art Deco detailing on buildings, vintage street signs, and shingled water towers.“My art is all about New York City architecture,” she said. “I walk around the city and see things that I like, which reminds me of old New York that people take for granted.”Next to her booth, New Jersey-based artist Margaret Koval displayed 11 eerie nighttime landscape scenes that she made by painting on the back of a linen canvas and extruding the oil paint through it. Her unique process references the pixellated reality of digital photography and the folksy charm of needlepoint images. “It takes on layers of meaning and optical effects,” she said. “I love doing paintings of people in urban spaces who are being surveilled.”In another corner, Williamsburg artist Nieves Saah shared two paintings of Hawaiian deities. One featured Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, fire, and wind, who is widely believed to punish tourists who pocket shards of basaltic rock when they visit the Big Island. “People take souvenirs, but then things happen to them so they mail them back to Hawaiʻi asking Pele to please forgive them,” she said. “You have to be respectful to nature and Hawaiʻi. The Goddess Pele is watching you.”Lower East Side artist Marcus Glitteris was the life of the party.Nearby, Lower East Side artist Marcus Glitteris flitted between conversations throughout the night, offering drinks and taking candid photographs before assembling everyone who participated in a group photo.It helped that his work, a large fabric collage featuring 44 Café Bustelo bags hand-sewn into two figures holding hands, was displayed prominently behind the bar. “What I like about Clio is it offers very good quality art at a very affordable price,” Glitteris said. (Prices at Clio range from $50 all the way to $150,000, according to the fair.) “And it’s entertaining.”The fair’s ongoing second edition, on view through this weekend, welcomes a whole new host of artists, from South Korean painter Anikoon with his cheeky Pop-inspired canvases to LA-based Mary Lai, whose paintings on wood look as textured and rich as textiles. As the art world appears to embrace new models in the face of a changing market, one wonders if “anti-fair” is really the right moniker for Clio — maybe it’s just a regular fair that decided to put the artists first.