NEW YORK—For a fair with the subtitle of “Age of Anxiety,” this year’s Volta NY, perhaps the fair’s best ever, turns out to be enormous fun. Volta began in Basel in 2005 as an exclusively invitational event meant to provide an alternative to the commercialism of Art Basel. In 2008, it expanded to New York, as a satellite to the Armory fair, and adopted a new format that focused exclusively on solo shows. This year’s edition features some 80-odd single-artist booths in a show that, for all Volta's anti-commercialism, has really taken its gloves off. Many of the displays are loud, brash, attention-grabbing, and unashamedly populist. If only the financial markets responded to anxiety this way.

China Square Gallery’s participation in the hoopla is relatively restrained. The New York– and Beijing-based gallery has chosen brightly colored, outsize, happy-smiley art from Shen Jingdong for their booth. London’s Domobaal has John Strutton’s joke-strewn and mock-offensive pictures, drum skins, and guitars, and has filled the booth to overflowing. Faría Fábregas Galeria from Caracas has a rather restrained exhibit of photographs from the 1970s by Leandro Katz, but as if to make up for its subtlety, gallerist Henrique Faría had turned himself out in an eye-catching outfit including a gorgeous bright blue charro bow-tie that was a good 15 inches long. Aeroplastics Contemporary from Brussels has an installation of David Kramer’s work, including a garishly illuminated drinks cart. The folks at London’s Paradise Row have painted their booth black, built in a half-demolished-looking front wall, and filled it — inside and out — with Russian artist Gosha Ostretsov’s large and lurid pop art.

There is even performance art. New Yorker Tracy Candido’s Sweet Tooth of the Tiger, which she describes as “a renegade bake sale project” is manned here by a group of young people who invite you to throw dice to determine what price — if any — you will pay for their rather unusual homemade treats; in Danielle Arnaud Contemporary’s booth, Heather and Ivan Morison are performing an 80-minute puppet show. (“We decided to only do it three times a day,” Arnaud admitted, “because the other dealers were getting a bit annoyed.”)

And it wouldn't be an art fair without buried treasure and a beautiful young woman stripped to the waist: Hoet Bekaert from Ghent, Belgium, is presenting an installation by the Thai artist Surasi Kusolwong that takes Duchamp’s Nude Descending A Staircase as its starting point. The young lady appears in jeans, a pair of long braids, a gold pendant, and nothing else. Three similar pendants are hidden in the installation, which comprises obelisks, hung drawings and prints, and colored yarn strewn about the floor a foot or so deep. The necklaces are worth about $500 each, and if you find one it is yours to keep.

Kusolwong may be serious in his intention, but he has a streak of showmanship that serves him well at this Volta. By contrast, art that relies on subtlety, reticence, or even just modest scale suffers in the overexcited atmosphere. Skuc Gallery from Ljubljana has beautiful, restrained architectural wall drawings by Miha Strukelj, and Katharine Mulherin of Toronto has Mike Bayne’s beautiful snapshot-size oil paintings (until you have a good look at them you could almost misread them as photos), but neither booth is getting much attention. This has less to do with the work’s quality than with its lack of bombast, though of course a lack of bombast isn’t always a bad thing.