ATHENS— There was a relaxed and upbeat vibe as the 15th edition of Art-Athina kicked off the preview evening, on May 21 (the fair ran through May 24), in its sunny new digs at Faliro Pavilion, a stadium used for the 2004 Olympics, with a view of the Piraeus port and all of its yachts, not to mention a World War II destroyer. Visitors were greeted at the entrance by the voice of Greek sculptor Theodoros reciting theoretical musings (which got a bit frenetic toward the end, when Theodoros repeated, “Fast and effective, fast and effective…”).

And with a new director, Alexandros J. Stanas, the fair felt brand new and efficiently organized, as does the city of Athens since it got spruced up for the games. Apparently the installment of a new regime also served to erase less than happy memories from Art-Athina’s past, including last year’s last-minute threat of cancellation and the 2007 arrest of the director over the display of an obscene video.

The small stadium invited a transparent, easy-to-navigate layout with an overview from the circular second-floor gallery, which held the exhibition “10 Aspects of Hellenic Photography,” as well as a café and lounge. A glance down to the grid of white boxes — holding 58 exhibitors from 12 countries, more than half of them Greek — was enough to take in the fair’s breakdown: a predominance of painting and photography, very little video, and virtually no installations. The consensus on the floor was that this fair is the perfect platform for young collectors who want to discover new and emerging artists at medium-range prices.

Art Rotterdam director Fons Hof noted that although the Rotterdam fair is about the same size, it has an edgier, more international profile than Art-Athina, which focuses more on the local market. An exchange program with Art Rotterdam drew a couple of Dutch collectors, including Wilfried and Yannicke Cooreman-De Smedt, who said he was looking for Greek artists informed by international experience. He and his wife purchased work by Irene Efstathiou, who, they were pleasantly surprised to discover later, had been nominated for the DESTE Prize, sponsored by Greek collector Dakis Joannou’s eponymous center for contemporary art.

On opening night there was not the frenzied atmosphere of many international fairs, due in large part, perhaps, to the more laid-back buying style of Greek collectors. Gallerist Mirta Demare, an Art-Athina veteran from Rotterdam, observed, “My first time [at Art-Athina] I was sitting here in the morning and wondering why I came. The Greeks come late at night to look around, and then on Sunday, two hours before closing, they buy like crazy.”

Many exhibitors said there did not seem to be many Greek collectors around at all on opening night. Sofia Vamiali, of the local gallery Vamiali’s, said, “This is a slow fair; not everything happens the first day. However, last year the opening was much busier.” She attributed the slower pace to the fact that it was name day for both Constantine and Helena, “the names of half the population of Greece.” She did manage, however, to sell a small Jonathan Monk photograph (€3,000 [$4,180]) to the three collectors behind the nonprofit exhibition space Associazione Barriera in Turin.

By Friday, the first full day of the fair, first-time local exhibitor (and TEFAF regular) Mihalarias Art, which carries established Greek artists, had already sold works by Chryssa, Pavlos, and Takis — all so famous (in Greece anyway) that they use only their first names — in the range of €50,000–100,000. The director said she had seen big collectors Ion Vorres and Christos Moschandreou surveying the scene on opening night — and the famously discreet Joannou was spotted on Friday morning buying a video for a few thousand euros — but added that there seemed to be more “buyers,” as she called them.

Athens gallery the Breeder — which exhibits regularly at Frieze, Art Basel Miami Beach, and Basel’s Liste — did not seem to have a problem with the reported scarcity of early birds either. George Vamvakidis, one of the gallery’s two partners, said they adapt to the local market by bringing small to medium works. By the second day, the gallery had sold nearly all of the several small paintings by Romanian duo Gert and Uwe Tobias that it had brought. And all three of the paintings it had on hand by young Greek artist Stelios Faitakis, visibly inspired by the historic Byzantine tradition, had gone to Greek collectors, for between €5,000 and €20,000.