Frieze and Frieze Masters are divided.
However, the separation is not just between Fairs but between those in and those out. The elite and the unwashed. The buyers and the looky-loos.
I was informed that The Other Art Fair was a fun mish-mash of galleries and artists with small makeshift booths and a DJ keeping the vibe alive.
There is a lot of rough to sift through in such arenas, but a diamond may appear occasionally. Many ideas explored are labored and the artwork derivative, but that can apply to the more polished show.
Before I headed off to my timed ticket at Frieze I decided to pop into Themes and Variations on Westbourne Road.
'Acid Bauhaus' Desk, 1989 by Alessandro Guerriero for Studio Alchima at Themes & Variations
‘Pop’ is the theme of the display, in keeping with London Art Week. The Memphis-style 'Acid Bauhaus' Desk, 1989 by Alessandro Guerriero for Studio Alchima is a great example
This Post-Modern zebra gem of a desk was complemented by the two vases by Palo Paranetto placed above, in dayglo green and lemon yellow.
1960s Wall Lamp at Themes and Variations, London.
Three fried egg-looking light fixtures from 1960s France reminded me of the morning breakfast I had missed.
Astrid Dahl at Themes & Variations
They hovered over contemporary organic white ceramic sculptures by Astrid Dahl, like Loie Fuller dancers on fitted wood packing cases, a nod to the iconic Brillo Box.
Off to the park. The fair is vast as per usual, I quickly got lost. Despite all my efforts to follow a path I found myself dipping into one stand and exiting only to find myself turned around. I finally gave up trying to make sense of and concentrated on the work shown.
The specter of digital artworks was ever present but not in evidence.
Art Fairs are for tangibles. If you want to dip into NFT then don’t waste your time with real-life events, all that action is virtual, like an incel’s A.I. girlfriend.
There were crowds, as expected, as well as the lackluster gallery staff buried in digital devices, giving a frosty shoulder to anyone tiresome enough to ask obvious questions. With their ‘It’s all sold anyway (not that you were able to buy in the first place), look.’
Warmer staff interactions were found at the smaller galleries. A well-curated, wonderful display by the Irish Kerlin Gallery of Dorothy Cross was one such example. Her works are a wonderful mix of portraiture blending seamlessly with nature. Encounters with marine life are on full display, from the overlaid negatives of a dogfish/sand shark and a nude portrait to the film of the artist swimming amongst non-stinging jellyfish. A sensual interaction in another world that was conveyed with a refreshing lightness and sensitivity.
Carolee Schneeman Vermont March at Hales Gallery
Carolee Schneeman seemed to be very much on display. Galleries are capitalizing on the Barbican Retrospective of this radical feminist artist who has finally been exposed in the UK and now finds appreciation. The abstracted landscapes on canvas might give an insight into the wild nature that erupted in her 60s-bodied performance works.
Sigmar Polke, Two Heads. Micheal Werner Gallery
A favorite Polke of mine sat next to a Penck 1989 self-portrait both complementing each other. These artists manage to illuminate the spectral, as the ghost-like images peer right back at us with more intensity than a thousand gazes in their direction.
Maybe it was my projection, but Polke’s portrait started to resemble a recent former yellow-haired US President, sneaking into our vision and Penck’s, a father figure, once known affectionally as Die Fuhrer.
A.R Penck
Marching on.
Gazing was rife, as the crowd filtered in and out of the stands. This was not the monied elite, who had long fled, but earnest art lovers, who, for whatever reason had trekked to feast the eye and stir the mind. It seemed less about possession and more about sating a thirst for meaning. Although sometimes wonder if art didn’t come with a hefty price tag, would people care so much about it?
Too much thinking, back to looking
Green Male Head Down by Carroll Durham
A small work by Carroll Durham, a Green Male Head Down was just a sketch but contains a torrent of movement and tempo.
Hans Hartung at Simon Lee Gallery
A 1988 Hans Hartung acrylic in Simon Lee Gallery was a far cry from his 50s zen/‘Psycho’ black slashes on canvas. The Hitchcock gesture is still there but subdued. Working from a wheelchair, sprayed acrylics are squirted at the canvas with ‘Viagrian’ virility. A suitable technique for the artist to express himself in his waning years.
Bernard Frize
At Perrotin, Bernard Frize produced a haunting Acrylic and Resin work in various colors. The placid rainbow washes are interrupted with a burst of mixed congealed paints that dramatically pierce the picture plane. One could envision stability issues, as the cracks were already appearing.
Laurent Grasso
Also in the stand, Laurent Grasso painted a Medieval-inspired work, combining a battleground of knights with a Hilma Af Klint symbolist image. Awed, armored horseback soldiers, inspired not by the Holy Cross but by concentric circles and three moon stages. All very Game of Thrones/Lord of the Rings.
The figurative is ready to kill and die in the name of abstraction!
A ‘blinged’ out Calder meets a multi-handed Guanyin perched on a black-legged stabile base. The effect was appalling.
I have since learned it was a reference to victims of land mines that were discarded after the Vietnam War. The Bodhisattva growing them for the benefit of all the limbless.
Still, a stretch, as I imagined the gilded polished work gracing a collector’s foyer with the sound of gently running water over well-placed crystals.
Suitable for the PAD Fair, also running this week.
Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan
A colorful clock enamel work by Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan at The Modern Institute tapped an irreverent spirit but did it really require two artists to produce it?
I guess one for the idea, the other for the execution.
Luc Tuymans
It was getting to that time when I felt the urge to move North to Frieze Masters. A couple more works caught my eye. A somber-toned Tuymans portrait looked away.
Wolfgang Tillmans at Maureen Paley Gallery
A grainy moon by Wolfgang Tillmans caught just enough detail among the digital noise of the work.
Stephan Friedman Gallery
Stephan Friedman Gallery went all out with their African Gesamtkunstwerk wallpapered stand and captured the abstract Afro-futurist attention.
Nate Lowman
Nate Lowman offered Warhol-inspired flowers on shaped canvases, with digital weather maps providing the design. A portrayal of a tornado with all its foreboding ills, transformed into a thing of beauty. Meanwhile, in London a storm of a different sort was brewing.
Billy Childish harks back.
Billy Childish's works were dotted around the fair, his heroic Edvard Munch-like scenes of boatmen pitted against vast open landscapes hark back nostalgically but with so much thoughtful composition, like Peter Doig, they step into a timeless age.
A dayglo Navot Miller at Carl Freedman Gallery displayed a bright sunburned jock languishing on a lemon yellow towel with slapped on decal tats. The colorful scene as delightful as it was, went no further back than 1976 and could be of course seen today, among the retro-centric ‘youth’ in city parks.
Ugo Rondinone’s Mattituck paintings at Sadie Cole
Sadie Coles Gallery displayed Ugo Rondinone's super simple sunsets.
Was this the end of sunny times? The dying of the light? War, pandemic, and economic downfall looming in the news. When an energy crisis threatens, do we look to the sun for solace?
But wait, there is hope. Is it a setting sun or a rising one?
Study for ‘Cat Death’ by Carolee Schneeman at POW
As I left for Frieze Masters, two visions of cats bid farewell, a ceramic pretzel crowned moggy with electrified eyes, not quite as manic as Louis Wain’s. The other is a 1959 De Kooning-like abstraction by Carolee Schneeman at POW called Study for ‘Cat Death’.
I wondered which was more alive.
