MIAMI—It was a tale of two cities: Miami and Miami Beach. This year, the Bridge Art Fair sprouted an offshoot across the bay in the Wynwood district of Miami. And not only did it expand, but after two years in a kind of retro-seedy motel called the Catalina, Bridge managed to achieve for this second location a spot in a giant tent between the Red Dot and Art Miami fairs, two shows with proven fans.

So which venue worked — the one in hotels in Miami Beach, or the one in the spotless tent in Wynwood? And which fizzled?

If you guessed that breezy tent affair was the stronger, you would be wrong. Despite the number of satellite fairs moving to Wynwood, and the rumor that the Bridge hotel portion will end this year, it was Bridge Miami Beach fair that had happy dealers.

Let’s start there, where each gallery takes a separate, small hotel room, with or without the beds. The fair didn’t open until late on Thursday, but when it did, it was jammed. A number of dealers told me that it was supposed to close at 10 p.m., but that they kept their doors open as long as people kept coming in. For some that was close to midnight.

Both Bridge fairs are meant for emerging artists, but of the two, the artists in Miami Beach were a little more raw, and a lot more interesting. Nancy Toomey, of Toomey Tourell Fine Art in San Francisco, was showing the work of Lyndi Sales, a Cape Town artist, for the first time in the U.S. Sales makes intricate pieces out of paper, often lottery tickets. One piece is made of 109 boarding passes to commemorate a plane crash that killed 109 people, one of them her father. Prices for Sales pieces started at $600, and Toomey had sold pieces both opening night and on Friday.

Frederieke Taylor of New York was showing sculptures resembling imploded iPods — strange mash-ups of electronics, paper, and wire by the artist known as [dNASAb] that range from $1,000 to $4,500. “It started a couple of years ago when I bought one,” said the dealer. “I like to come home to it and turn it on. It’s like having a cat.” She began selling the pieces this year, and had found buyers on opening night.

And on it went: “Con Creatures,” made from the “skins” of stuffed teddy bears and bunnies, filled with cement, the wittiest displayed as trophy heads on plaques: $900. Carvings made out of telephone books: $1,300. Ross Racine’s completely fictitious subdivisions, drawn by hand and then digitally combined: $1,150, from Like the Spice Gallery in Brooklyn. A neon sign that said “Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll” in Arabic. Aboriginal art from Australia.

Dealers seemed happy to be there, and prices were dirt cheap.

Contrast and compare the new venue in Wynwood. Catriona Fraser, who has her own gallery in Bethesda, Maryland, said on Friday, “Nobody has been here until today.” How much art had she sold in three days? “Zero. Zip. Nothing,” she said. “Yesterday it was empty aisles. It’s very disappointing.”

Strolling the tent, one did see the occasional red dot: Oxenburg Fine Art of Miami sold a $3,000 Massimo Vitali photo and had another buyer on the line on Friday. The Apama Mackey Gallery of Houston was selling Denise Prince photographs, in editions of 10, like hotcakes; prices started at $1,300 and rose as the editions sold out. “It’s been slow,” Mackey said. “But today was amazing.” Virginia Miller Gallery in Coral Gables had holds on two great paintings by Chinese artists, Liao Zhenwo and Cao Xiaodong, both priced in the mid–$20,000s.

Palm Beach dealer Barbara Ann Levy had some nice Eric Rhein wire sculptures selling for around $3,400, but there were no buyers. “It’s been a dirge,” she said. “No sales.” It wasn’t that the people coming through weren’t sophisticated and knowledgeable, she said, “it’s the economy.”

“If they have money, they are not going to spend it on emerging artists.”

One gallerist proved that theory wrong. Edouard Steinhauer sold a $1,200 primitive Obama painting on opening night, as well as three other pieces. And he was selling Suzy Spence’s individual paper doll sculptures (Condi Rice in fatigues, Chloë Sevigny) for $100 apiece. “But,” he said, “it’s extra for the clothing.”