Daniel Abate Gallery, Buenos Aires’s hip barometer for up-and-coming artists, had front and center an installation depicting a typical Argentinean bread stand by Eduardo Navarro, whose works often focus on the commercial, economic, and social implications of modernization. It hadn’t sold at the time of ARTINFO's visit, but collector Ella Fontanals-Cisneros bought a print from Navarro’s “Solicitud de Empleo” series for about $7,000. Meanwhile, a mixed-media collage by Catalina León, who received the ArteBA–Petrobras Prize for the Visual Arts in 2007 and has works at Argentina’s Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario (MACRO), was going for $14,000, as was Argentine artist Sandro Pereira's sculptural photo montage in the shape of a head.

At the equally cool Dabbah Torrejon gallery, also located in Buenos Aires, a three-dimensional, large-scale oil painting overlaid with acrylic and collage by Manuel Esnoz hadn't sold yet for $20,000, while a rainbow geometric abstraction by the more seasoned Fabián Burgos tricked the eye, making one believe it was two paintings and not just one. Burgos’s optical illusions continued around the corner at the Miami-based Alejandra von Hartz Gallery, where an almost identical painting from the same series hung. The mischievous works were priced at $15,000 at both galleries, and while each had attracted scores of onlookers (most repeating the same dance: a double take followed by a close-up inspection), neither had red dots yet.

Halfway through the fair, Argentine gallery director von Hartz admitted that a work by young Argentine artist Ivana Brenner, one of the gallery’s newest, was the “first and only that we sold at this fair,” for about $4,000. “Because of the financial situation, everyone’s a bit more quiet,” she added.

The most expensive works at the fair could be found at the booth of Argentine veteran Daniel Maman Fine Art, where a mixed-media relief measuring roughly 9½ by 5 by 12½ feet by Juan Battle Planas was front and center, at a price of $500,000. Also on offer were an untitled work by figurative artist Antonio Berni, for $180,000, and a pair of paintings by Luis Felipe Noé, titled Alegoría de la Ganadería and priced at $180,000 each. Chandon Winery, which for the eighth consecutive year kicked off the buying at ArteBA, bought a photograph titled La caída de un sistema (The Fall of a System) photo 3 by Charly Nijensohn. It will be added to a contemporary photography collection that Chandon is building, to be exhibited at the company’s headquarters in Mendoza, Argentina.

Not surprisingly, the fair may have been less pocked with red dots than hoped for, but gallerists still seemed more upbeat than their North American and European counterparts on the fair circuit earlier this year, thanks perhaps in part to an increase in high-profile collectors and curators. While it may not seem as if it’s happening with the same force as Asian art, Latin American artists are slowly but surely carving out a niche within the mainstream art world — a perfect pace for Latin America.