Most of us aren’t able to shell out tens of millions of dollars for a Basquiat or a Warhol. But there are countless artists’ works to be had for considerably less. That’s the idea behind the annual Affordable Art Fair, running Saturday and Sunday at the Metropolitan Pavilion (125 W. 18th St.).
The Bronx’s Mónica Hernández, one of the fair’s headliners, is one such artist. Her parents weren’t too thrilled when she announced she wanted to be a painter — and not a doctor or scientist, as they had hoped.
Then they saw her works: vibrant domestic scenes featuring naked women in a variety of activities.
“It was a little awkward,” says the 23-year-old Dominican-American about showing Mom and Dad her images, which are frank and lush, their warm colors evoking the heat of her native DR.
“But then I was like, ‘I’m not doing anything wrong: This is my work, and I shouldn’t be insecure about it!’ ”
Less than two years after getting her BFA from Hunter College, Hernández is already one of the art world’s hottest rising stars. Her work has hung at BronxArtSpace and at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn. She’s an influencer, posing for campaigns for Nike and American Eagle — and in scantily clad selfies on her Instagram account @MonicaGreatGal, which boasts 109,000 followers.
She’ll have about a dozen pieces for sale at the Affordable Art Fair, priced from $500 to $3,000. (Affordability is relative.)
“It’s exciting,” Hernández tells The Post. “Because when you’re first starting out, you feel like, ‘I’m all alone out here — no one gets it.’ ”
Hernández, who moved to The Bronx with her family when she was 6, was still a kid when she taught herself how to draw. But at her parents’ urging, she graduated from Manhattan Hunter Science High School, and then went to Hunter College, initially studying psychology.
“As an immigrant, I felt I needed to find something sustainable, that guarantees a livelihood,” she says. “But I hated my classes, so I started taking art courses.”
She was met with more resistance. Some of the staff scoffed at her paintings of vulnerable curvy girls with curly dark hair and dramatic eyebrows doing mundane things, like eating spaghetti or examining a zit in the mirror.
“I had professors saying, ‘Why are you still drawing the body? It’s been done before,’ ” Hernández says. “But I’ve always drawn people, and I’ve always drawn people who look like me. I think it’s a way of processing my feelings of displacement as an immigrant. It’s like, ‘Who am I and what am I doing?’ ”
She found encouragement through Instagram, where she discovered other young artists exploring similar themes, and where her posts racked up lots of comments and likes.
‘When you’re first starting out, you feel like, ‘I’m all alone out here — no one gets it.’ ‘
They also granted her a bit of notoriety. Her provocative selfies, unvarnished and sometimes tweaked to exaggerate her so-called imperfections, like acne or underarm hair, made her something of an influencer. Soon, she was tapped to star in campaigns for Nike, American Eagle and Thinx.
“It’s part of the reality of being an artist today,” says Hernández. “You need to have multiple streams of income to be able to afford your own studio and your own art . . . But it can be exhausting and really hard to figure out how to prioritize your time.”
With Hernández’s burgeoning success as an artist, now, even her parents are happy about it.
“When I got my 100,000th follower on Instagram, my mom put it on her Facebook,” says Hernández, who still lives with her parents. “She’ll watch over me saying, ‘Don’t post that,’ or ‘Make the painting like this,’ or ‘You need a manager, let me be your manager!’ It’s cool to see her so into it.”
Affordable Art Fair, $20, $10 for students and seniors. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sunday, to 5 p.m. 125 W. 18th St.; AffordableArtFair.com
— Raquel Laneri
Other artists worth a look
Painting pigeons
“There’s a love-hate relationship with pigeons, they’re everywhere, but they have so much character,” JJ Galloway. The Maryland-based artist’s work “The Pigeon Cafe” is on display at the cafe (duh!) and bar area with 24 circular whimsical portraits of pigeons with food on their heads ($425-$625 depending on size). Galloway says she wanted a mixed of New York classics and new-age foods. “I wanted everything from the black-and-white cookie to charcoal soft serve.” Some of the foods, she says, “are my favorites when I come to New York . . . lox and bagels and ramen.”
Looking down
Dan Piech keeps in shape by running. He also keeps his eyes on the city sidewalks and streets. “I ran every single street south of 100th,” says the New York photographer of his rather literal take on street photography called “Concrete Canvas.”
“I’m looking for accidental moments, when things got spilled or cracks formed,” Piech says. He describes his prints ($2,400 to $8,500) as “hyper-clear,” with “hundreds of times higher resolution than a normal photograph.” You might think of Jackson Pollock when you look at Piech’s street-splatter shots.
Now and Zen
Contempop Gallery-owner Roy Seifert’s booth at the Affordable Art Fair boasts neon signs and aerial photography, but his favorite work is the grids of nine brightly colored Buddhas cut from plexiglass and hand-painted by his artist wife Tal Nehoray. “I want to make a contemporary, modern, urban Buddha,” says Nehoray, an Israeli-born New Yorker. Her limited-edition grids ($950) come with the artist’s statement: “This Buddha is made as a reminder to lead a mindful and compassionate life. It’s all a reminder to be kind.”
— Suzy Weiss