LONDON—The Dow swung wildly again today; nevertheless, if the mantra at Frieze was “It's not as bad as we thought it would be,” the same held for Zoo, a fair for younger and emerging artists and galleries, now in its fifth edition, which opened to VIPs today at the Royal Academy. (The fair opens to the public tomorrow and runs through Monday.) The day began with the inauspicious news that megacollector Charles Saatchi had been kept waiting outside for some 20 minutes at noon, at the start of the ultra-exclusive sponsors’ preview, possibly because he hadn’t been recognized. But it ended with bustling crowds, and a number of reported sales. 

Dealers offered conflicting views about the sponsors’ preview. Some found it sparsely attended; others said they’d seen a lot of collectors come by. Anita Zabludowicz, a London-based collector who runs the private exhibition space 176 and is a major supporter of emerging artists, and of Zoo, could be spotted scurrying excitedly from booth to booth with her husband, Poju. Artist Yinka Shonibare was also seen, as were American collectors Susan and Michael Hort. By 2:30 p.m., when another batch of visitors were permitted in, things visibly picked up.

Said Joel Beck of New York gallery Roebling Hall, “Last year was mayhem” — it was so crowded, in fact, that the fair had to make many collectors wait outside due to fire code — “this year people won't be afraid not to buy right away.”

Finola Jones, owner of Dublin gallery Mother’s Tankstation, said, “If something comes out of this doom and gloom, it’s that we'll look at art again.” She was using her booth to promote the challenging work of David Sherry, who spent much of the day doing his performance Just popped out, back in 2 hours, for which he sits in a chair for long stretches wearing, on his forehead, a Post-it note with precisely that message. Jones had sold a few of Sherry’s whimsical drawings, arrayed on the wall behind the seated artist, for under £1,000 ($1,730) apiece.

Jerome O Drisceoil, proprietor of Dublin gallery Green on Red, said he was pleasantly surprised by how things were turning out. “Lots of people are looking, and some are buying,” he said. He had sold a painting on newspaper by young Irish artist Niamh McCann for €1,800 ($2,420). “Normally at the outset [of a fair] you get a sense, and my sense is that there will be selling here.”

Faye Fleming, of Geneva gallery Arquebuse, said she had been worried before the fair opened, but once things began, “I didn't sense a difference from last year.” She sold several works by British artist Tim Braden, who was shortlisted for the fair’s John Jones Art on Paper Award (Clunie Reid, who is being shown by London gallery MOT International, won the award). One of Braden's paintings on board, showing figures in a room and a still life of teakettles, went to a Dutch collector for £6,000.  

Works that seemed eerily suited to the zeitgeist of fear and uncertainty were doing particularly well. At London gallery Ancient & Modern, a print by young artist Ruth Ewan, from an edition of 20, simply depicted the words “Unrecorded Future Tell Us What Broods There” — the phrase comes from a 1927 cycle by poet Gustav Spiller titled Poems of Human Service. The gallery had had strong interest in two full sets of 20 prints, all of which are printed with Spiller's words, at £5,000 each. (A set of pins by Ewan, bearing slogans like “I'm against racism” and “Anti-Nazi League,” sold to Amanda Coulson, director of the Basel- and New York–based Volta fair, during Zoo's first hours.) “It's been busier than we'd expected; we're a bit overwhelmed,” said co-director Rob Tufnell.

Similarly literary and expressive of our unpredictable times was the booth of London gallery Paradise Row, which is curated around the theme of T.S. Eliot's epic masterpiece The Wasteland (1922). The booth will change each day of the fair, in accordance with the five sections of Eliot's bleak poem, and for the first day it featured a floor made to look like cracked lava (made by gallery directors Nick Hackworth and Patrick Gibson after a 1922 design by painter and author Wyndham Lewis) as well as paintings depicting comic-book-like scenes of violence by Russian artist Gosha Ostretsov. Three of these sold during the preview, for £13,000 each, to a British collector.