On three separate television screens at the Volta booth of Boston’s samsøn gallery yesterday, a man was shown hammering a nail through his foot. “The artist, Todd Pavlisko, made the nail himself,” gallery director Camilio Alvarez explained. “And here he is right here!” A suit-clad Pavlisko suddenly turned from his seat in the booth and bounded out to explain the installation, as onlookers watched his self-mutilation in high-definition video.

Such are the joys of Volta, the Armory Shows younger-sister fair, which asks participating galleries to fill their booths with the work of a single artist, who is then often on hand to greet curious collectors. In the first hours of the fair yesterday, Pavlisko’s video work remained unsold — “It’s a difficult piece,” he conceded — but gallerist and artist alike said they’d talked to some potential buyers, who would need to spend $25,000 to buy the first video in the series of three, with prices for the other pieces climbing after that.

Collectors wandering the aisles seemed to be taking their time with larger installations and works beyond the $10,000 mark, but many galleries reported strong sales in the mid-four-figure range. “When you come off the elevator, you can really feel things are humming,” Christa Schuebbe, of Düsseldorf–based Schuebbe Projects, said. She had lined her booth with sexy, delicate drawings and watercolors by Franz Burkhardt, with a variety of sizes and subjects to fit every collector’s desire. (Funnel the eerie sexuality of Dr. Lakra through Raymond Pettibons darker eye for a rough approximation of the vaguely pornographic portraits on display.)

Small, delicate images of pin-up models by Burkhardt started at $2,000, while larger, fetish–tinged watercolors showing the legs of women in stockings were priced up to $7,000. Schuebbe, who proudly declared that she’d sold out her booth last year (no small feat, given the market at the time), reported selling works to an Amsterdam collector early in the day and said she had been taking reserves throughout the afternoon. “I think it’s even a teeny bit better than last year,” she declared. “It feels more dynamic.”

London dealer Cynthia Corbett echoed Schebbe’s enthusiasm, having sold, in the early hours of the fair, two intricate, sparkling chandeliers papered with lottery tickets and other work by Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom, who collaborate under the nom de guerre Ghost of a Dream. “We sold one of the installations to a collection in Houston, the drawings are all going to homes in New York, and this chandelier is going to one of my collectors in the north of England,” Corbett declared cheerfully. The booth’s centerpiece, a sprawling, multi-panel installation priced above $50,000 remained unsold, though Corbett seemed optimistic.

Cecilia Jurado of New York’s Y Gallery also reported the sale of a work early, sending one of Tamara Kostianovskys cloth sculptures of meat — which hung gingerly from massive slaughterhouse hooks — to a collector from London. Jurado had priced the individual works, which together resembled a Francis Bacon-esque meat locker, at ambitious prices ranging from $5,500 to $25,000.

Nordin Gallerys Axel Nordin, of Sweden, reduced the single-artist concept to an even more aggressive extreme, bringing only a single work: a tall, shiny–gray sculpture of a phallus ejaculating silver semen, made from a recycled BMW. It was the brainchild of Karl Tuikkanen, who thumbed through a book while his dealer spoke with visitors. “It was a four-year journey to make it,” Nordin explained of the 1,800-pound sculpture. Its price? “100 K.” There were no buyers midway through yesterday, but one never knows. Collectors seemed to be out in force — two dealers said the spotting the Miami-based collectors Don and Mera Rubell touring the booths — and there was, indeed, a certain energy to the air.

Performance artist Tara Strickstein was doing her part to keep that spirit alive, checking out booths in an elaborate black dress and hat, a towering, scantily clad woman at her side. They were taking a break during a day of performance centered on the seven deadly sins, she explained. “Here is gluttony and lust,” she said, motioning to the woman at her side. “It is a combination of transgendered dancers and a pie-eating competition.” Though ARTINFO was offered a seat at the pie-eating table (or a position atop it with a dancer), journalistic duties forced us to decline. There were, indeed, sales to report.

Even "relational" work, that most ephemeral of art, was being offered at a handful of booths and finding eager buyers, or at least participants. New York's Scaramouche had turned its booth into a healing and massage center designed by Einat Amir and Arlen Austin. A three-ring binder detailed the names of the artist-masseuses who are willing to provide their services on the finely wrought wood furniture, which, incidentally, was also for sale at prices ranging from around $1,700 to the upper-four-figures. Artist Arlen Austin was said to be available for $40, while Kara Walker commanded a $70,000 price tag. “She’s great, if you can afford her!” Amir was heard telling one gentleman. People were buying the service, and one woman was spread out on the massage table face down, viewing a slide-show projected through an opening underneath the table. Art and a massage in one: quite a deal.

Portland’s PDX Contemporary Art, meanwhile, had also jumped in on the relational aesthetics game, converting their booth into the center for a tea ceremony, courtesy of the artist Nancy Lorenz. Participation was free, though collectors would be expected to pay for her thick, messy paintings made in part from from gold leaf, pigment, mother of pearl, and resin. That sense of luxury — in look, if not materials — carried over to the Miami-based Dorsch gallery, where Richard Haden had crafted a broom made with silver bristles, a polychromed refrigerator, and thick jugs of paint, priced from $6,000 to $16,000.

All about the fair, especially in that lower-price realm, there were happy gallerists. Galerie Vanessa Quang, in town from Paris, quickly unloaded a sculpture made of barbed wire by Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen that resembled its title, Tumbleweed, for a clean $3,000. Two more sat on offer, at $3,500 and $4,000, awaiting a buyer. At the far end of their booth, Larsen had stacked hundreds of business cards in a wild, twisting tower, held together by tape. Director Victor de Bonnecaze likened it to a “self-portrait,” and had marked it with a $15,000 price tag. Berlin’s Jarmuschek + Partner was also toasting early successes, having sold off a large drawing by Markus Putze for $4,000 and several smaller works for $1,000 each. Not a bad start to the day.

Extra Joker / Onestar Press, of Paris, had priced its works on offer in that mid-four-figure sweet spot, which seemed eager to write checks to. They’d brought the young Dutch conceptualist Rafaël Rozendaal to their booth, whose work took the form of Web sites — you can fit a lot in a booth, in the form of papers printed with the addresses — that they had priced at a cool $4,000 and sold to over a dozen interested parties. (A personal favorite: kazimirmalevich.org.) Collectors get a certificate of authenticity and their name in the title of the Web site, director Anna Klossowski explained, who declared it “a very versatile work. You can project it or print it out.” And proudly email to your friends, of course.

Lower East Side gallery Invisible-Exports, which was in Pulse last year, was participating in Volta for the first time. “We really like how they put the artists first,” co-director Benjamin Tischer explained. “The artist's name is large, and the gallery is secondary,” he said of the art-fair placards marking each booth. The gallery was showing Mickey Smiths photographs of bound periodicals, some of which had been installed in a cascade of color around the booth. Prices ranged from $2,500 for individual prints up to $35,000 for the booth-spanning installation. Co-director Risa Needleman explained, “She photographs magazines that are being sent to permanent storage — which is the Dumpster.” 

While Volta saw many satisfied veterans return for another round of selling on the 11th floor of 7 West 34th Street, there were a fair number of first-time exhibitors trying their luck as well, in what is said to be a rejuvenated market. Volta organizers, no doubt eager to maintain the fair’s prestige through somewhat turbulent economic times, had moved aggressively to fill the fair, some gallerists said. “To be honest, I got a really good offer on the booth and decided to do it,” one dealer who asked to remain anonymous, admitted. “Why not?” So far, it seemed their collective risk-taking was being rewarded.