Among the many satellite events bringing new energy to Chicago this year, Neighbors stands out for its deliberate lack of commercial urgency and for prioritizing the exchange between galleries, institutions and ideas. Founded by the young collector and sponsor Mirka Serrato and Jonny Tanna, founder of the Frieze satellite Minor Attractions in London and Harlesden High Street, this exhibition describes itself as a purposefully chosen platform—helping the institutional exposure of a strictly selected group of galleries, helping them to present their artists and programs in local institutions.
“This exhibition was conceived as a platform for dialogue and intimacy, and it was very encouraging to see that reflected in the way the galleries and the audience interacted with the work,” Serrato told the Observer, noting that on opening day, the neighborhood welcomed leading institutions, including the MCA and the Art Institute of Chicago. “Chicago saw us, and we were proud, supported by the strength and narrative of all our exhibitors who formed together. There is a strong sense of attention and exchange throughout the program, which is exactly what we hoped to create within the context of EXPO week.”
Perfectly staged in a Gold Coast apartment, Neighbors appears less fitting than the exhibition it inhabits, where tensions of palette, scale and themes are carefully orchestrated against a backdrop of early 20th-century buildings linked to Chicago’s culture of private patronage. The result is something closer to Design Miami or Salone del Mobile than a typical exhibition of booths: a curated domestic space where art, interior and historical space are discussed rather than contested. You could say the Neighbors has revived the saloons of Chicago’s Gilded Age culture for now. Within the four rooms of the 1,200-square-foot apartment, the galleries reside in the buildings, their presentations appearing as a series of spaces rather than a series of stands.
Neighbors, according to Serrato, began as a response to structural tensions in the broader art system that had become impossible to ignore. Small galleries, doing a lot of research, are fighting for visibility and access to institutions, while institutions are becoming reluctant to engage at an experimental level, unsure of how to adapt to a rapidly changing ecosystem without losing authority. Neighbors stepped in to close that gap in a strong way in Chicago’s art scene. “That’s important,” he insists, describing the city not as a presentation space but as an underlying framework—historical, personal and strategic.
From there, the concept of “neighbors” expands outward. In bringing the exhibition back to a historically linked residential scale and patronage, Serrato cites Peggy Guggenheim as a point of reference, noting how she created a platform that bridged two worlds—the US and Europe, the institutions and underground practices of the avant-garde that would eventually define the canon. “He’s done a really good job of finding that by collecting, but I don’t have the ability to collect at that level,” Serrato said. Instead, he created Neighbors as another kind of intervention: one that facilitates diffusion—of attention, resources, opportunity—rather than accumulation. The aim is to bring together galleries that show good behavior, strong artist representation and previous institutional involvement, presenting them within a context that feels serious, looks good and has a strong intellectual and, most appropriate, readable in the institutions.
After leaving a finance role that no longer aligned with his creative ambitions, he pursued further education in Suthwini and spent a year traveling the art world, drawing its structural spaces and building relationships. That research supports the Neighbors model, which grants rights of proximity, access and long-term ecosystem development over scale and spectacle.
The choice of space came from a close conversation with the participating galleries, as confirmed by Broc Bleve, owner of the Lower East Side Post Times gallery and one of the 15 exhibitors of the exhibition. Bleve accepted the invitation precisely because of its deliberate format, seeing it as an opportunity to make meaningful connections with collectors and city institutions. The Post Times brought Andrew Chapman’s faded, post-digital, air-framed panel paintings into the living room, alongside Richard Maguire’s intricate paintings exploring colonial tensions and the intersection of gender and politics. Along with local history, Maguire’s series focuses on the largely forgotten figure of Ram Gopal, a passionate pioneer of Indian classical dance credited with bringing the art to the West in the mid-20th century.
Among the other participants was the London-based Circle, which was shown at the same time at Art Cologne in Palma de Mallorca on the same day, presenting Tamara KE’s brightly colored paintings in which the cartoon-like is seen as an expression of unconsciousness. Other galleries in the strongly curated exhibition include Feia from LA, presenting the work of Sidnie Jimenez; Tureen of Dallas, to illuminate the works of Los Angeles poet, painter and graffiti artist John Garcia; London’s Harlesden High Street, with works by Chicago-based artist Van Payne and multimedia pieces by Antonio Lechuga; and Milwaukee’s Green Gallery, featuring prints by indigenous artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka in conversation with the ceramic works of Chicago-based Jessica Jackson Hutchins. The exhibition also drew a dynamic collection of Chicago spaces—Hans Goodrich, Shanghai Seminary, Twelve Ten, Tala, Weatherproof and Good Weather, the latter of which split its presence between the neighborhood and the EXPO.
Bringing together galleries and project spaces from five different cities and art scenes, the neighborhood’s aim was to encourage cross-market discussions between adjacent rooms rather than adjacent booths.
Economically, the model remains deliberately restrictive. Galleries pay a fee, and the fair ones are given a ticket, although these serve less as sources of revenue than as tools for measuring engagement and collecting data, Serrato explained. Building a business structure in accordance with the relevant characteristics – proximity, he said, does not mean disorganization. The neighborhood’s central desire, he added, is to foster meaningful connections that can translate into real opportunities for participating galleries, offering an alternative to the scale-driven, commercial way of thinking that dominates major exhibitions. What emerges is not a rejection of the system but a restructuring that privileges attention over sales volume.
Ultimately, he sees Neighbors as a responsive, community-driven space within the arts ecosystem. This year, the show was one of those programs. Join BARELY FAIR—“a 1:12 scale international contemporary art fair” that has become a satellite fixture of Chicago art week. Since its launch in 2019, Barely Fair has redefined what fair can be with its booths featuring whimsical toys and miniature artworks that create opportunities for vendors to engage in surprisingly meaningful conversations about their show.
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