On the face of things, Frieze is pretty awful. It represents the art world at its most brazenly commercial, its most avaricious and capitalistic. This is the market laid bare, with all of its champagne, ludicrous outfits and obscene excess on brazen display for anyone willing to fork out a wodge on a ticket. That’s what reviews of Frieze generally complain about, all the greedy capitalistic knives being stabbed into the heart of their beloved, pure art.
But Frieze, and the more refined Frieze Masters, isn’t really about art. Sure, this art fair in Regent’s Park, London, is the biggest art fair in the UK, attracting all the best galleries and artists in the world. But Frieze isn’t about painting and sculpture and conceptualism – it’s about selling. Going to Frieze is all about mindset. If you come here looking for innovation, emotion and aesthetic brilliance, you’re going to be let down. But if you come here to experience the art world – to watch deals get done, to see the market in full flight – it’s genuinely a huge amount of fun.
Be warned: by attending Frieze you are inevitably going to see a gargantuan amount of utterly pointless, totally anonymous, immediately forgettable painting. Abstract, figurative, geometric, whatever you want, there is an endless amount of it here, because it sells, and almost all of it sucks. You will see ceramics that look as if they were made by four-year-olds. You will also see some of the absolute best facelifts money can buy. Some of the people here are pulled so taut they’d rip if they sneezed.
The fair is vast, maybe even interminable. The key is to follow your instincts. Look at everything but only stop and consider the stuff that hits you immediately. That’s what Frieze is for – flexing your art muscles and going with your gut.
The fair is divided into sections: Focus, Artist-to-Artist, various curated/themed areas, and then the main fair. Focus is the place for young galleries, and it’s invariably where you will find the most interesting, experimental art.
It kicks off this year with London-based painter Glen Pudvine at Xxijra Hii gallery, who has filled his mirrored booth with huge, nude self-portraits, capturing himself in ludicrous mid-grimace doing a kettlebell workout. They are stunningly painted: he puts more effort into capturing the folds of a scrotum than most artists put into faces. They’re funny images, silly even, yet also brilliantly unique takedowns of fragile masculinity.
If you’ve never found whales sexy before then Luís Lázaro Matos’s pastels should turn your head. They reimagine Benny the Beluga, a whale that got stranded in the Thames in 2018, as a Speedo-wearing Mediterranean party animal living it up as a literal fish out of water. In the middle of the Public gallery booth, Xin Liu has created a metallic pond, bubbling with duckweed under neon grow lights, all surrounded by strange, bio-mechanical paintings.
The Artist-to-Artist section sees young artists selected by big names. Ana Segovia was selected by Mexican conceptualist Abraham Cruzvillegas, and her closeup paintings of cowboys’ crotches are all denim, leather and rampant sensuality.
In the main bit of the fair, Gagosian’s solo presentation by Lauren Halsey is a rare moment of bold joy in an otherwise fairly safe and dour bit of the tent. The LA artist has created huge cast plaster murals of everyday black life – kids, cars, games, barbershops, gyms – in a sort of ancient Egyptian take on American street culture. It buzzes with the life-force of south central LA.
The fair is absolutely filled with artists ripping off Huma Bhabha’s post-nuclear, pock-marked, sci-fi take on sculpture – there seems to be one every 15 metres – and when you finally get to an original at the David Zwirner booth you realise how much better she is than her imitators. The bust on display here is classic Bhabha, all grim, apocalyptic grossness.
I’d happily take home at least one of the two Celia Paul portraits at Victoria Miro, and the huge John Baldessari at Sprüth Magers would no doubt look great above the sofa. The super gruesome, cartoony Peter Saul drawings at Michael Werner are stunning, as are the works on paper by Turner prize-nominated (and likely winner) Nnena Kalu.
At Frieze Masters, 10 minutes north, the experience is totally different. Mainly dedicated to work from before the year 2000, it’s endlessly more refined, quiet and elegant than its brash counterpart. Want an ancient Roman bust? A suit of Greek armour? A Marc Chagall? A Marcel Duchamp? A giant triceratops skull?! This is where you’ll get it.
Elsewhere on show: an elephantine Giorgio de Chirico, a glimmering deep sea blue Yves Klein on paper, some eye melting op art by Victor Vasarely and Yoshio Sekine, loads of amazing Dutch flower paintings and a jaw-dropping display of wispy, perfect ancient Roman glass.
Is Frieze this year better than last year? Is it worse? Neither, really. Frieze is Frieze. It’s hectic, overwhelming, filled with way too much art and way too many rich people. It’s beautiful, stupid, pompous, ridiculous and absolutely exhausting – it’s the art world at its worst, but also at its best. Let’s hope it never changes.
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