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"With the cloistered mega-fair Frieze New York looming to the north, buyers at the more modest Pulse New York were less impulsive, pun intended. Perhaps collectors were waiting to check out the goods on Randall's Island before making any major acquisitions. Small scale, affordable works are selling like hotcakes, while big statement pieces are accruing plenty of interest, but few final sales. Friday morning was a subdued epitaph to the frenetic bustle of Thursday, but a steady flow of modest sales kept Pulse\u2019s heart beating. Many gallerists were optimistic about the weekend, while maintaining \u201Cdon\u2019t count your eggs\u201D pokerface.What may turn out to be the fair\u2019s biggest sale is still the stuff of speculation. \u201CCity Surface,\u201D&amp;nbsp;Led Pencil Studios\u2019 commissioned installation for Pulse Projects, is being seriously considered by an unnamed major New York museum, though the sale is not yet final. The work, priced at $165,000, depicts a narrow alleyway filled with plywood reconstructions of urban debris including an air conditioning unit, a dumpster, a traffic cone, and scores of other artifacts of city life.British gallery Man &amp;amp; Eve's prime real estate at the very front of the fair paid off, garnering a great first day with a number of sales.&amp;nbsp;Lisa Nowiki, winner of last year\u2019s Pulse Prize in Miami, got a lot of attention and some of her intricate weavings were sold.&amp;nbsp;Lain Andrews's surreal, semi-figurative acrylic on canvas painting \u201CProgressive\u201D sold for $8,000, and several of Alex Virji\u2019s baroque video game-inspired ovular paintings went for $1,460 each.At the other end of Pulse\u2019s sales spectrum was Brooklyn's Causey Contemporary, which sold only one of&amp;nbsp;Jordan Eagles\u2019&amp;nbsp;blood, copper, and resin paintings for $1,000, one of his smallest and most inexpensive works. Perhaps collectors will come around \u2014 Eagles\u2019 work was among the most refined and visually explosive at the fair, as ARTINFO noted in our top picks from Pulse. Torch Gallery had yet to sell&amp;nbsp;Tinkebell\u2019s&amp;nbsp;controversial&amp;nbsp;\u201CHorse, My Little Pony,\u201D but had put Terry Rogers\u2019s debaucherous oil painting \u201CThe Calculus of Existence,\u201D priced at $150,000, on reserve.Lawrie Shabibi, the only gallery representing the United Arab Emirates at Pulse \u2014 and, in fact, the only Middle Eastern gallery at the fair \u2014 shined on Friday morning with strong chatter circulating around the work of Tunisian artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke, whose work has previously been acquired by MoMA. Many potential buyers were interested in her phallic, Cy Twombly-esque painting, \u201CThese Goddamned Boys All Stealing,\u201D priced at $14,500. Perhaps it\u2019s the work\u2019s interesting backstory that\u2019s causing a stir: Kaabi-Link found the wall fragment in the basement of a Berlin building that, she later found out, used to house Cosy Corner, a Weimar-era gay cabaret bar. Or perhaps the attraction is the piece's subject matter. \u201CObviously there are a plethora of pensises in this work,\u201D Shabibi conceded. A hypnotizing embedded video work with nods to Renaissance painting by Palestinian-Iraqi artist Sama Alshaibi sold, unsurprisingly, for $9,000.Shortly after arriving on Friday, gallerist Daniel Weinberg said there had been\u201Cgreat energy yesterday morning, especially since it was so early.\u201D He stressed that he tried to bring a little bit of everything, from Lee Bontecou\u2019s minimalist paintings to works by current Whitney Biennial artist Andrew Masullo. &amp;nbsp;Loren Munk\u2019s loquaciously-titled \u201CGraphic Representation of the Dialectical Aesthetics of Modernism 1900-2000\u201D sold for $16,000. One of Massullo\u2019s pieces sold for $6,000. Larger works were still available for $18,000.\u201CIt\u2019s good to have a themed booth,\u201D said Noel Estrada of Galerie Stefan Ropke. \u201CIt\u2019s nice to have a real conversation with collectors about ideas... it gets them excited.\u201D The booth's theme \u2014 the intersection of art and science \u2014 seems to be generating chemisty with buyers. The gallery reported a nice mix of regular collectors and first-time buyers; selling works that investigate the science of optical perception. An abstract photograph by Sharon Harper sold for $15,000, as did two abstract paintings of undulating neon lines by Julie Opperman, priced at $2,800 and $3,000. &amp;nbsp;Davidson Contemporary had good news to report on Friday, having sold two painstakingly rendered white ink graphs by Pulse alum and rising star Sam Messenger, priced at $4,000 and $5,000. The gallery also mentioned \u201Ca ton of interest\u201D in his&amp;nbsp;large piece, priced at $25,000. Also reaping the benefits of the trend towards meticulous abstract work on paper was Philadelphia\u2019s Gallery Joe, which sold a&amp;nbsp;Mia Rosenthal&amp;nbsp;drawing for $5,600 and a subtly elegant&amp;nbsp;Lynne Woods Turner&amp;nbsp;for $8,000. Frosh &amp;amp; Portmann reported a lot of interest in Paul Paddock\u2019s spooky watercolors, and sold his cautionary&amp;nbsp;\u201CDon\u2019t Mess With Alexis\u201D for $3,800.Mike Weiss Gallery had to rehang its booth, replacing&amp;nbsp;Jan de Vliegher&amp;nbsp;Fragonard-esque \u201CHappy Lovers\u201D (which sold yesterday for $20,000) with a similar Rococo style piece by the artist. Gallerist Anna Ortt happily mentioned that the fair was raising excitement for de Vliegher\u2019s gallery show, which opened Friday night. Meanwhile, at least three collectors are seriously considering buying&amp;nbsp;Will Kurtz\u2019s \u201CBrighton Beach Bench\u201D installation.&amp;nbsp;\u201CEverybody is mad for it!\u201D Ortt said. Whoever buys is going to need a big living room. Mike Weiss's 24th Street neighbor, Galerie Jean-Luc &amp;amp; Takako Richard, sold six of Beverly Fishman\u2019s druggy-cool glass pill sculptures, priced between $2,000 and $4,000 each. They also sold two Paul Henry Ramirez paintings for $4,000 each.However, Hosfelt Gallery\u2019s \u201CCreature II\u201D was hands-down the star of the fair, drumming up a lot of talk about Alan Rath\u2019s interactive digital sculptures. Christopher Adams\u2019s delicate ceramic calamari sold for $1,200, and the entire set of Ruth Marten\u2019s piece were generating interest \u2014 and priced at $16,000.Carrie Secrist Gallery of Chicago sold its most subdued and least color field-rich drawings by Anne Lindberg. Despite a number of inquiries about the large, site-specific thread installation \u201CCall and Response,\u201D the gallery was still waiting on a real commitment to the work, which will likely make for a complicated installation in a collector\u2019s home.Cologne's Galerie Kundlek Van Der Grinten had already sold work from nearly all of their artists, including pieces by Alexander Gorlizki, Eyal Danieli, and Jonathan Callan.Freight + Volume sold David Kramer\u2019s ink-on-paper piece \u201CSimple Life,\u201D and gained a possible commission for Michael Scoggins (known for his enlarged loose-leaf doodles and portraits) stemming from interest in his piece on view, \u201CAll American Family.\u201DCreative Capital, the generous grant-giving foundation, had surprising success at their upstairs location in the Impulse section \u2014 the part of the fair typically reserved for younger galleries with solo booths \u2014 even though the organization's main purpose was to preview pieces from their upcoming May benefit auction. They sold ten editions at $500 each (plus an auction ticket) from former grantee Eve Sussman\u2019s stereoscopic \u201CElevated Train\u201D series, and immediately found a buyer for Beverly McIver\u2019s \u201CWatermelon VII\u201D at the estimated price of $850.Perhaps the fair\u2019s biggest success story also came from upstairs at Impulse. Williamsburg\u2019s Black and White Project Space and Gallery reported selling out half their booth, wrapping up 13 works by Peter Brock priced between $2,500 and $5,000. Major collectors wrote out checks alongside first-timers in one of the biggest booth successes so far. Director Tatyana Okshteyn told ARTINFO, \u201Cbig collectors from Minneapolis came, people who would never go to Williamsburg to see the gallery show.\u201D &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Related: From Robotic Dogs to Blood Paintings, 10 Picks From Pulse New York[content:shareblock]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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