A huge tent in Regent’s Park is currently the best place in the world to see the biggest names in contemporary art. 162 high-end galleries have set up shop at Frieze London and for a few days instead of schlepping across town/the world to see different artists, you can see examples of their work all together in London. Each gallery has been allocated a peculiarly cardboard-packing-case type sign, proudly announcing where in the world they are based, and within a few minutes as you walk through the fair you can see work that would normally entail trips to Mayfair, Bermondsey, New York or Zurich.
An uncontemporary art idyl of flowers and logs greets you at the entrance. Then Sadie Coles’ and Gagosian’s booths hit you with bursts of colour. Angus Fairhurst’s red forest wallpaper and Carsten Holler’s primary-coloured kindergarten bring some much-needed diversity to the overall aesthetics of the fair. Walk past these and it is a seemingly never-ending series of white cubes. The work changes but each booth has similar backdrops and usually at least one gallerist playing with an iPad. Actually it could be an iPhone or a Macbook, but it will definitely be made by Apple. If iOS ever gets a debilitating virus the art world will be immediately paralysed.
It’s easy to think you’ll walk around Frieze in a strict aisle-by-aisle order, but that’s hard to do in practice, especially as many booths have more than one entrance. Far better to wander, going where your eye leads you. With hundreds of artists on show what should you see? Highlights will be different for everyone, depending to no small extent on whether you see work at the start of the day when you’re fresher than a daisy or hours later when you’re flagging, have been soaked in the sculpture garden and seen more art than is advisable in one dose.
Playing in the Kindergaten at Gagosian
Christoph Buchel’s Sleeping Guard at Hauser & Wirth (D6) is an unexpected sight, if you can see it before you have been told about it. Oh, hang on, sorry. Nearby at BQ (D9) Alexandra Bircken has violently spatch-cocked some motorbike racing leathers, making a big game trophy of a human being’s second skin. I’d have displayed it on the floor.
The Smile Face Museum (A1) has opened a branch at Frieze, bringing its first international exhibition to London. Their wall displays Smiley iconography found in popular culture, alongside contemporary artists who have used the smile in their work. Eric Fischl’s art fair paintings are displayed in precisely the right environment, whilst Yoshimoto Nara’s demur acrylics also catch the eye. As part of the Frieze Focus strand, Dan Gunn Gallery have restaged Michael Smith’s Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snackbar installation from 1983. Complete with period (if incomprehensible) video arcade game it’s a blast from the past of changing politics, threats and technology.
This year’s fair also includes several performance areas, which give a slight non-profit artiness to what is a commercial juggernaut. If you are around at 1pm you can experience the edible (or is it?) performance Does This Soup Taste Ambivalent? The UNITED BROTHERS are giving away soup that has been home-made by their mother (sounds good so far, what’s the catch?) from vegetables grown near Fukushima’s 2011 nuclear disaster (and there’s the art). Of course Frieze couldn’t really allow a mass art world poisoning, but the sense of risk and the realisation that many people have no choice but to eat contaminated food emphasises the luck of living in a country where the tomatoes in your local supermarket aren’t going to kill you. The only danger in the British fruit and veg aisle is eating the pips of too many apples. But the internet assures me that you’d have to eat the pips of 2100 apples to actually die of cyanide poisoning, so that’s not an immediate worry.
As well as the works in the main fair there is a sculpture garden at the South-east of Regent’s Park, as well as off-site pieces, talks and of course Freize Masters. But that’s a whole ‘nother article.
Frieze runs until 18th October
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