Where else might you see, under the same roof, a live hermit crab living inside a replica of Brancusi’s sculpture “Sleeping Muse” or a luxury motor yacht on sale as a work of art? Answer – at Frieze Art Fair, which could just as easily be called Frieze Fun Fair. But although there is always plenty of wit at Frieze, it is also a serious international show case of leading contemporary art galleries from around the world.
Now in it’s eighth consecutive year Frieze, www.friezeartfair.com, which ran from 13 – 16 October this year, in a vast, purpose-designed tent in London’s Regent’s Park, presented new work by over a 1,000 artists from around the world represented by 173 galleries from 33 countries. Galleries from emerging regions such as Asia and South America set up alongside European and American representatives. Co-founders and directors of the fair, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover commented about this year’s carefully selected galleries “The geographical diversity of the gallery list attests to the art world’s increasing globalisation, offering the opportunity to make discoveries as well as see work by some of the most significant artists working today.
The aforementioned hermit crab was performing in an aquarium in a Frieze commission, “Recollection”, by the French artist Pierre Huyghe. Several other spindly crabs were also dancing their own mesmeric choreography in an underwater seascape of red rocks. The work is described by the artist as a “live ecosystem hosting a specific narrative created for Frieze Art Fair”. It was designed to create an intimate psychological world to form a point of contrast with the atmosphere throughout the rest of the fair and it did have a calming, hypnotic effect on me. www.mariangoodman.com
The luxury motor yacht is concept by the German artist, Christian Jankowski.
Jankowski has teamed up with a luxury yacht manufacturer whereby he will transform a boat into a work of art just by adding his name in chrome letters. The concept is that if the boat is purchased as a boat it will lose value. If bought as a work of art it will gain value – simple! And by the way, the boat is not yet built it has to be commissioned (a smaller vessel was on show at the fair) and it will cost 65 million euros as a straight forward boat, but 75 million euros as a work of art. www.lissongallery.com/#/artists/christian-jankowski/
Other eye-catching works included “The Fruit of Knowledge” by Elmgreen and Dragset, which showed at the Victoria Miro Gallery’s stand: a life-sized model of a chimpanzee balancing on a pile of books and art catalogues, including the Bible and On the Origin of Species, stretching for a banana which is out of reach. www.victoria-miro.com
At the Thomas Dane Gallery stand, a complex piece, by Michael Landy of (I hope he won’t mind me saying) Heath Robinson style mechanism to destroy credit cards was on show. www.thomasdane.com. This 12 foot structure seemed somewhat over elaborate for its purpose but I guess that was the irony.
Both painting and photography was well represented. I was drawn to the serenity of the paintings bu Japanese artist Yoko Someya at the Tomio Koyama Gallery Inc. Many of her motifs feature flowers, birds, plant and animals. She applies Japanese paper to canvas on panels, and creates imaginary worlds using delicate strokes and colours so the paper’s gentle qualities remain present. www.tomiokoyamagallery.com.
The work of photographers such as Andreas Gursky was on show at White Cube www.whitecube.com, and Nan Goldin at Matthew Marks, www.matthewmarks.com.
Bjorn (umlaut on the o) Dahlem at the Sies + Hoke (umlaut on the o) gallery of Dusseldorf illustrated how, by assembling a range of ordinary objects and materials, striking works of art can be created. He uses clocks, wood, steel, aluminium, porcelain figures, pharmacutical bottles, marble figures, pine cones, acorns, lacquer and even red wine and vacuum cleaners. www.sieshoeke.com/artists/bjoern-dahlem.
This year 60,000 people visited Frieze and strong sales were reported at every level. Significant sales included a new work by Gerhard Richter, Strip (CR921-1), for £1.5 million (the most expensive work on sale), at Marian Goodman; a Neo Rauch painting for $1.35 million at David Zwirner; and a Takahashi Murakami carbon-fibre sculpture for $900,000 at Emmanuel Perrotin. Hauser and Wirth sold all editions of their Thomas Houseago sculpture park inclusion, Hermaphrodite for $425,000 each, and Thomas Dane Gallery placed Glenn Ligon’s neon Warm Broad Glow (2011) with an overseas foundation for $200,000.
The least expensive works included the editions that were on sale (for the first time at Frieze) as part of the In the Public Eye stand. The clue here is in the name: all works shown were limited-edition prints by contemporary artists published by some of London’s leading public institutions including the ICA, Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine and Studio Voltaire. All institutions are not-for-profit. The ICA was selling Matthew Brannon prints at £200 each.
