“It’s much freer than other fairs,” London-based collector Anita Zabludowicz said at the opening of Independent’s fourth edition, held in Chelsea’s airy former Dia building. “Without any booths, it feels a bit like walking in a museum.”

Collectors Marty Margulies and Susan and Michael Hort brushed shoulders with art world stalwarts Cecilia Alemani and Amanda Sharpe at the VIP preview. Even the Armory Show’s executive director, Noah Horowitz, ducked out of his own fair to catch a glimpse of the event.

The brainchild of New York dealer Elizabeth Dee and London dealer Darren Flook, Independent seeks to showcase serious art —no frills, no shiny stuff, no cheap theatrical gags. The fair remained true to its mission this year with a cerebral selection of dealers showing even more cerebral artists. Consider it the art-historical equivalent of meat and potatoes.  What’s been surprising, then, is the volume and intensity of sales. The collector-to-dealer ratio was far higher than at the Armory Show’s VIP opening (though the Dia building’s compressed layout may be a contributing factor).

Galleries sold three lavender clay wall pieces made with lasers by Pae White for $12,000, as well as several Kim Fisher paintings of enlarged newspaper clippings for $7,500 each. Office Baroque Gallery parted with a graphic painting by Tamar Halpern —her first experiment with the medium — for $14,000 and two photo collages by Leigh Ledare for $15,000 each.

Outsider art was also in high demand. Galerie Susanne Zander sold five haunting, one-of-a-kind vintage photographs of séances by Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton for $9,100 each. (A Canadian surgeon, Hamilton became fascinated with the occult in the 1920s and ’30s.) White Columns found success with the work of the late, mentally disabled artist Rocco Fama. Two hours into the preview, four of his bright, geometric, architectural drawings had already sold for $1,700 each.

Among the more ambitious presentations has been Broadway 1602’s. The gallery is displaying archival documents from the notorious ArtCash benefit, a fundraiser organized by the foundation Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1971. The organization’s president asked Andy Warhol, Robert Whitman, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Gormley, Red Grooms, and Marisol to create fake dollar bills that guests could gamble with at the event. The entire archive remains available for an undisclosed sum. On Friday evening, the gallery invites fairgoers to play a game of blackjack with ArtCash. 

Perhaps the most expensive —and unsettling — work at the fair was Jill Magid’s “Auto Portrait Pending,” priced at $1 million. In 2005, Magid signed an agreement with LifeGem, a company that specializes in creating diamonds from cremated human remains. Her conceptual installation took over the entire booth of RaebervonStenglin and was comprised of a dramatically lit, unset gold ring and a series of contracts. “When she passes away, her ashes will be made into a diamond, which will become the property of the collector,” explained dealer Beat Raeber. 

Echoing the refrain of many dealers at this ambitious, intellectual fair, he added, “We hope it’s going to go to a museum.”

To see images, click on the slideshow.