NEW YORK—The Affordable Art Fair New York is one of the least pretentious places to see high-quality international contemporary art in the city. The annual fair, now in its seventh edition, runs June 12–15 at the Altman Building and adjoining Metropolitan Pavilion, and with general admission priced at only $17, it’s cheaper than a trip to MoMA or the Guggenheim.

An affordable art fair may sound amateurish to some, and the art on view here does range in quality, but the gallerists I spoke with yesterday had almost entirely positive things to say about the event, whose self-proclaimed mission is “to serve every kind of art enthusiast.” “This fair is much better than the Affordable Art Fairs in Australia,” said first-timer Peter Gant of Carlton, Australia–based Peter Gant Fine Art. “They generally attract some really bad shit.”

As of this writing, Gant’s only sale so far was a Sol LeWitt silkscreen for $6,000, but he seemed pretty relaxed about it. He had brought mostly works by American artists, which he plans to “dump at auction” if they don't sell by Sunday. The one Australian artist whose work he did bring was Nathan Feldman, whose messy, childlike, seemingly Basquiat-inspired mixed-media works on paper were priced at $600 apiece.

Gant also spoke highly of the crowd, saying that this was his fifth fair this year, and that the New York buyers were the best-informed crowd he had come across yet. Other gallerists echoed the sentiment. “There are a lot of return collectors — people writing things down, going home to do their homework, and then returning,” said Alida Anderson of the Philly-based gallery Alida Anderson Art Projects. Anderson was joined by gallery artist Lenny Campello — both of them third-timers at the fair — who stressed that the AAFNY was about making connections. He excitedly mentioned speaking with a curator from the Met who had stopped by the booth at Wednesday evening’s preview.

Still, for Anderson, like for Gant, sales were slow. The gallery had sold three limited-edition silver gelatin prints by Cuban photographer Cirenaice Moreira, titled La libertad es una palabra enorme (Freedom is an enormous word), for $950 each, as well as number of mixed-media paintings by American artist Sheila Giolitti, priced anywhere from $500 to $2,200. Based on past experience, Anderson expected sales to pick up over the weekend. In the meantime, she had taken down a number of high-ticket items, which were slow to move, replacing them with a selection of smaller, more inexpensive charcoal drawings.

Montreal’s Joyce Yahouda Gallery was experiencing a similar frustration, as gallerist Alana Riley explained: “Last year, many of the larger pieces sold, so we brought a lot of larger works this year.” But yesterday afternoon, the gallery had only sold two smaller works in the $800–900 range, one of them a vinyl-paint-on-paper work by Montreal artist Adrian Norvid.

For some, though, the fair was already a success story by the end of the preview. First-time exhibitor Angela Royo, of New York’s Angela Royo Latin American Art, could only tell me, “Last night was crazy! I talk, I sell, I pack!” Royo said her biggest sellers were panels from a 5,970-piece installation by Colombian artist Ruby Rumie, entitled “Sujeto-Objecto.” Each panel contains 25 miniature (4 x 4 cm) acrylic-and-lacquer-on-resin teselas, and the panels were being sold in pairs for $2,000. Royo had already sold all but one of the 12 panels on display in her booth, as well as countless more that she had stored away underneath her table.

Yann Bombard and Catherine Guerin, at Paris’s Envie D’Art, also had nothing but good news to report, as they had sold out almost their entire booth at the preview. They noted that the buyers at AAFNY have “more of an emotional connection to the work,” finding the transparency and honesty of the fair refreshing. “They come, they like, they buy. It’s a simple way to buy contemporary art,” said Bombard. Among their booth’s standout offerings were works by Paris-based Corinne dalle Ore, whose bright mixed-media and oil-on-canvas pieces, which went for $850 to $1,150, look like artistic versions of pop-culture advertisements.