LONDON—Yesterday’s professional preview for the Bridge Art Fair, a Chicago- and Miami-based event that is trying out London for the first time, presented a tale of two fairs. On the one hand, “We’ve been dealing with press all fucking day,” said David Kesting of Capla Kesting Fine Art of Brooklyn. “Forty to 50 crews.” On the other hand, if you went into any other gallery and asked how things were going, the response was likely to be, “It’s too early to tell,” or more honestly, “I’ll let you know when I sell something.” (As I was leaving, I returned to the gallery where I had started to ask the same question. Paris dealer Olivier Waltman replied, “No, but one person is actively thinking,” which meant he was doing better than most.)

Two categories of people were invited to the preview—press and VIPs. By all accounts the vast majority fell into the first group, and of those, many, perhaps most, came only to see Capla Kesting Fine Art, where Daniel Edwards's life-size sculpture of Prince Harry as a dead soldier was big news.

In other words, there was Capla Kesting’s attention-grabbing stand and then there was everyone else. Waltman’s situation was hardly unique. By the end of the preview, few galleries reported having sold more than a piece or two, and since the prices at this fair are relatively low (most sold works seemed to hover around £1,000), the sums were negligible. Still, no one I spoke with was discouraged.

The reason for this is that the first Bridge London has a lot working in its favor: The gallerists are enthusiastic, friendly, and eminently approachable; the art, at its best, is fresh and quirky; and the site, the Trafalgar Hotel, is not only centrally located but a wonderful space in which to display and see art. Because each gallery is given a hotel room instead of a booth, the art can be seen in a space that is more intimate and thankfully free of the distraction of people milling about between stands. Moreover, as hotels go, this one is delightful, with ample white walls great for hanging work.

In addition to intimacy, the hotel setting lent a casual feel to the fair. To cut down on costs, many gallerists stayed in the hotel room where their work was on display. If the bed was present, it was usually a good indicator that the dealer would be there after the collectors had departed.

Jonathan Greene, of Sarasota, Florida-based gallery Greene Contemporary, said that because the artwork was installed among furniture, it was easy for collectors to imagine how it would look in their homes.

Another reason for the casual feel was that some gallerists had failed to complete their installations by the opening bell. When I visited Burkhard Eikelmann’s area at 2:30, it looked like a collector’s charmingly overstuffed living room.

Many of the galleries at Bridge have the feel of startups, and, as with young companies, there are some that are happy simply to be there (“To be a real gallery, you have to join the circus,” said Conleth Finnegan of Love Wood Gallery of Antwerp, a late entry to the fair not listed in the catalogue, on his decision to participate in the fair) and others that plan to someday go blue-chip. Robert Devcic of GV Art clearly plans to fall into the latter category. “Bridge is about raising our profile. We don’t expect to cover costs.”

Currently the gallery operates in a house in Wimbledon and rents out temporary spaces around London for occasional shows. But Devcic said that he was close to opening a more traditional gallery space on Hoxton Square, near London stalwarts like White Cube. Five years from now, he hopes to be at Frieze and New York’s Armory Show, rather than at Bridge London and Bridge New York (which is to run concurrent with the Armory Show in March). Unfortunately, to move to the next level, Devcic said, some of his artists will have to change: “Some are content with where they are,” he said, which appeared to translate into their not being a great fit for this ambitious young dealer. But he also cited artists who were poised to grow in accordance with his own ambitions, including David Marron, whose installation Imaginary Shipwreck was one of the fair’s more striking works.