With Armory Show exhibitors reporting steady business during the fair’s opening day, eyes turned to Pulse, which relocated to a new space this year just south of its old location on the Hudson River. Would the art-market recovery also bless less-known exhibitors?

For Santa Monica–based Mark Moore Gallery, the answer seemed to be in the affirmative. One of the fair’s most established exhibitors, Moore followed the fair-traversing trend of galleries showing a selection of work by a single artist — which ARTINFO also observed at the Armory Show this year — presenting a memorable booth of work by the Canadian painter Kim Dorland, who also had work on display at Mike Weiss's Scope booth. Moore had presented a selection of paintings by Allison Schulnik at last year’s edition of the fair and sold out in two days. This year she was hoping to repeat that success with Dorland, who, like Schulnik, uses intense impasto to render subjects surrounded by nature and street scenes.

Moore told ARTINFO that he wanted “to make an impression with people” and “give them something comprehensive and meaty.” At art fairs, he said, there's so much to see that he wanted to “give people a buffet instead of hors d'œuvres.” Sales, he said, “were just a cherry on top.” (Moore, as one can see, is fond of food metaphors.) Once again, however, his booth seemed to please collectors' palates: half of Dorland's work was sold within the first hour of the fair's preview at prices ranging from $2,500-$30,000. Gallery artist Tim Bavingtons also had abstract works on paper on display in a specially-designed public installation near the fair's entrance, which were nearly sold out by the end of Saturday, at around $5,700 apiece.

Bucking the solo-show trend, New York gallery Freight + Volume opted to fill its booth with a wide-ranging survey of gallery artists. Owner and director Nick Lawrence praised the fair’s “manageable size” at  at 330 West Street, saying that “there really is no bad booth location.” Artists in his booth included Andrew Guenther and Ali Smith, with prices ranging from $2,000-$20,000, but while Lawrence said there was interest he did not report sales when ARTINFO visited.

P.P.O.W director Jamie Sterns was another New Yorker with kind words for the fair’s location, which she aptly described as “cozy.” P.P.O.W.’s booth had work by a mixture of emerging and more established artists, with prices ranging from $800 to $50,000 — something for everyone, in other words. On the emerging side was recent Columbia grad Milano Chow, who Stern says the gallery discovered a few weeks ago when they were impressed by a portfolio of his drawings. P.P.O.W kicked the fair off with a sale of George Boorujy's ink on paper piece of an antelope for $8,500.

Drawings were also selling at the Netherlands-based Livingstone Gallery, where one by Raquel Maulwurf went for $3,000. Her moody, black-and-white charcoal pieces on matte board, which depict abstracted images of wars and catastrophe, were “drawn” by scraping away a charcoal layer to expose the blank surface underneath.

New York art dealerEdward Winkleman, who had stands both at the fair and at the hybrid Independent event in Chelsea, commented that Pulse’s new locations in New York and Miami each suit it well. Its new Florida location, the Ice Palace, is lined with palm trees, and its new far West Side warehouse locale is “very New York.” His booth had a quirky assemblage of artworks — Winkleman likened to “a curiosity cabinet” — including a black-and-white drawing by Sarah Peters that stretched the length of the 20-foot back wall. In front, a video by Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation played on a monitor before an empire-style couch. Adding to the cabinet was an Andy Yobers Preserver, a lush, fur-lined life preserver, which quickly sold for $8,000. Winkleman also sold several small photographs from Jennifer Daltons “Reappraisal” series for around $100 each. He had just recently handed over his gallery to Dalton and the artist William Powhida for a special lecture series called “#class,” so he was no doubt relieved to be selling some actual art.

Los Angeles-based Charlie James Gallery, meanwhile, had opted for a three-artist installation, showing Walter Robinson, Steve Lambert, and the aforementioned Powhida. All three artists produce artworks that are aware of politics, comment on contemporary culture, and seem resolutely aware of their status as commodities — strong statements for an art fair setting. James, a collector–turned–dealer whose gallery focuses on critical work, said that James Rosenquist was the first artist that he feel in love with, a fact that strongly influenced the subject matter he felt was pertinent in successful artworks. It appeared to be working for him, as two works on paper by Powhida sold in the $5,000 range.

One of the highlights of IMPULSE, the individual artist section of the fair, was Michael Rosenthal Gallery's booth featuring Los Angeles–based artist Megan Whitmarsh. The idea for the booth started with a drawing of a fantasy version of Whitmarsh’s studio that included a Yetti and several workstations, which the artist then translated whimsically into the third dimension with a plush adaptation of the drawings. Hundreds of embroidered household and art-supply objects filled the booth in the booth. Individual installations of selections of the work were priced between $6,000-12,000. Rosenthal has been happy with the response to playful the booth, saying, “even the most depressed people respond to the work.” Whitmarsh herself had reason to be cheerful, as she was named as one of the runner-ups (along with Laurent Cratse) to the 2010 PULSE Prize, awarded to IMPULSE’s strongest booth. Johanna Unzueta earned the top prize of $2,500 for her work, Transition, which had been presented by R.J. Fine Arts.

Perhaps the fair’s most talked-about work was a Hummer installation by sculptor and filmmaker Jeremy Dean at the booth of CTS Creative Thriftshop. The piece was modeled after so-called "Hoover Wagons," cars that had their engines removed in order to be pulled by horses during the Great Depression because their owners could not afford gas. The horse-drawn art piece, entitled Back to the Futurama — a reference to General Motors’ "Futurama" car exhibition at the 1939 World’s Fair — had been set to provide rides around Central Park last week, but had to be rescheduled due to weather. Judging by the sales reports streaming out of most art fairs this week, the Great Recession has ended for the collecting class. Unemployment remains trapped in double digits for most Americans, however, making the image of that gleaming SUV finally hauling the wealthy about town all the more infuriating, and effective.