North Entrance at Frieze New York 2013. Photo by M-KOS
Frieze New York closed on Monday 13 May to finish another buoyant edition in its short but very auspicious two-year history. Claiming the Deutsche Bank sponsored event is setting a new standard for cultural tourism in the Big Apple would raise more than one eyebrow, as Frieze functions so differently to fairs and biennales in non-hub cities. It nevertheless has shaken and stirred other contenders off their laurels, such as Armory, and certainly Frieze’s choice of location added Randall’s Island on the art map – a patch of land floating between East Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx normally used for music or sporting events – to simultaneously allow art lovers to experience another view of New York’s cityscape on their journey to one of the most exciting shows on the international art calendar.
Paul McCarthy, Balloon Dog, 2013. Sculpture Garden. Presented by Hauser & Wirth. Sold for $950,000. Photo by M-KOS.
Although Frieze offered exceptionally vast parking and valet facilities for the sometimes all-too dense metropolis, the yellow school bus and ferry transportation services to Randall’s Island presented refreshing alternatives, to recommend to even the most ambitious travel budgets. While the rainy weekend weather made for a somewhat less appealing ferry transit, the school bus departing from opposite Guggenheim Museum provided an enjoyable and unique ride along with some of the smartest dressed people ever seen on a traditional student vehicle. Similarly to last year, the boat and bus paths of entry to the Island allowed to fully appreciate the expanding view of Frieze’s signature tent, designed by Brooklyn-based architects SO-IL, as well as the surrounding Sculpture Park curated by Tom Eccles, and dominated by Paul McCarthy’s 80-foot-high inflatable Balloon Dog (2013).
Gagosian Gallery’s booth. Photo by M-KOS
Once ushered through the usual security checks, Frieze welcomed the attendance with an open planned lobby accommodating the information desk, book shop and a first selection of cafés and VIP restaurants, before leading onto three separate corridors of gallery booths. The mix of natural ambient light and regular grid of overhead incandescent fixtures offered optimal presentation settings for 186 participating exhibitors, the largest and most diverse number in the fair’s 10 years history, which originated from a total of 32 different countries (Yvon Lambert, Paris; Lisson Gallery, London; Johann König, Berlin; Project 88, Mumbai; The Third Line, Dubai; Regina Gallery, Moscow, to name a few). From this multitude, still 55 galleries were local to the host city (from Gagosian to David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, James Cohan, Marian Goodman, and others of similar calibre). Younger venues were also invited, either within the Joe Fresh sponsored Frame or the Focus sections, respectively for emerging galleries under six and ten years of existence.
Paintings by Julia Rommel at Bureau, New York in the FRAME section. Photo by M-KOS
Despite a struggling economy in America and across many parts of the world, business was booming under the Frieze tepee. For instance, all of Julia Rommel’s solo presentation in the Frame showcased Bureau gallery sold on the first day, to place her works in key US collections, while Luhring Augustine Gallery surpassed all expectations by selling its entire inventory within the first opening hour. Victoria Miro reaped similar results by strategically proposing works from artists which already enjoyed a strong museum presence in New York, such as Yayoi Kusama. In another tour-de-force, Marianne Goodman Gallery sold the first exemplar from an edition of four of Tino Sehgal’s latest performance entitled “Ann Lee” (2011), a piece inspired from the virtual muse of Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno. Notorious for his insistence on immaterial transactions, Sehgal only allowed the $80,000 purchase over a verbal agreement for the rights to this performance, to thus leave no paper trail to its new owner. As evidenced by these market achievements, it was easy to imagine some of the world’s top collectors sashaying amongst the 45,000 strong audience over the four day event, and most notably, the presence of over 90 international museum groups such as Guggenheim, MACBA (Barcelona), The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pompidou (Paris), Serpentine (London) and The Power Plant (Toronto).
Giant plaster pizza and the styrofoam sun by Tom Friedman at Luhring Augustine’s booth. Pizza was sold for $270,000
Seven additional works were also featured in Frieze Projects, curated by Cecilia Alemani, to commission artists for site-specific concepts that either enlisted the exterior settings of Randall’s Island or the more controlled yet bewildering experience of the fair itself. Along with five other artists in the program (Liz Glynn, Maria Loboda, Mateo Tannatt, Andra Ursuta and Marianne Vitale), Frieze Projects also staged a re-enactment tribute to Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Goodden’s now seminal artist-run restaurant FOOD, first produced in 1971. Individual daily menus were arranged by a selection of artists, turned part-time chefs, to count Matthew Day Jackson, Carol Goodden, Tina Girouard and Jonathan Horowitz. Frieze Story, Frieze Stand Prize and Frieze Talks completed the already ample program, respectively in featuring a literary project by novelist Ben Marcus, a $15,000 award to Galerie Elba BenÃtez for the solo showcase of Carlos Bunga, as well as daily panel discussions with leading figures such as Frieze Magazine editors Dan Fox and Sam Thorne.
Confirming its high profile, numerous “off” events like Nada and Pulse have agglomerated around the same calendar dates as Frieze, to also benefit from the heightened attraction offered by the Randall’s Island Art Fair. In conjunction to this, Frieze’s Education space is perhaps investing in its own legacy, training future generations of artists, curators and collectors, by hosting public school workshops and guided group visits, this year to over 600 children from more then ten schools across all five New York boroughs.*
Galería Elba Benítez’s booth, the recipient of the stands prize this year. Photo by M-KOS
But judging from their confidence gained since last year, we will not need to wait another generation to see Frieze as a game-changer in New York’s contemporary art scene. Already this second edition offered a much more audacious selection of works, going for more ‘cutting edge’ materials and subject matters, as much witnessed in the exhibitor sections as in the less commercial Frieze Projects et al. Although the fair again caused controversy by not fully complying with union worker issues, the American market did follow through to visibly bring more business to this year’s program. Ultimately, Frieze’s risk-taking ethos counter-balanced by sharp intuitions not only transpires in the aesthetics of their magazine and art fair but now also within their reputation as global art figures (at least from London to New York) an entrepreneurial attitude which definitely appeals to the American sensibility.
* Numerous samples from the Frieze Education workshop experiments are now available to view from the dedicated tumblr page, as well as other links from the Frieze New York website, including sounds, images from the exhibitor booths and much more.
Come back soon for the upcoming slide show!
Marianne Vitale, Cockpit, 2013, for Frieze Project. Photo by M-KOS
* Text correction: The description of the Randall’s Island has been changed from ‘an otherwise semi-vacant lot of land floating between East Harlem, Brooklyn and the BronxIn’ to ‘a patch of land floating between East Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx normally used for music or sporting events’. Thanks to our reader Holly Daggers for her help in pointing out this detail.