Mark Leckey’s inflatable Felix the Cat at Galerie Buchholz, Berlin. Photo: Guy Sangster Adams
By Guy Sangster Adams
The transition from the bright but fragile autumnal sunshine and colours of The Regent’s Park into the 13th edition of Frieze London, which ran from 14th – 17th October, was unsettling. As one’s eyes struggled to adjust to being plunged into darkness and the looming shapes of other fair goers and staff, white daubed slogans didn’t reassure: ‘welcome to purgatory’.
Spine-tingling and mystifying the space was created by the equally mysterious American artist, Lutz Baker, and immediately initiated one into this year’s Frieze Projects. Curated by Nicola Lees, the commissions create hyperreal environments subverting and transforming the visitor’s interaction with the fair.
Exiting Baker’s extraordinary moment of submersion, pushing blindly through heavy, opaque, butcher’s curtains, hoping not to make contact with the face of someone coming the other way, the fascinating and highly successful juxtaposition it had set up was instantly apparent. White light seemed whiter, colour saturation vividly returned, as one’s senses excitedly tried to assimilate the spectrum of 164 galleries from 27 countries brought together by the new director of Frieze Fairs, Victoria Siddall, and co-artistic directors, Abby Bangser and Jo Stella-Sawicka.
Mark Flood and Ynge Holen at Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London, this year’s Stand Prize winner. Photo: Guy Sangster Adams
With so much to see and the infectious, sometimes frenetic, buzz of so many visitors to the fair, one’s eyes search for an initial rooting focal point. Mark Leckey’s huge and great fun, inflatable Felix the Cat, readily supplied this, smiling cheekily over the top of Galerie Buchholz’s stand. Under the lee of Felix, a quote from the late Japanese-American sculptor, Ruth Asawa, ‘Sculpture is like farming, if you just keep at it, you can get quite a bit done’, ran across the back wall of another of the stand-out exhibitors, Hauser & Wirth. Beneath the inspirational quote they presented ‘FIELD’ – a crop of sculptural works, including Jason Rhoades and Paul McCarthy, growing on a grid of identical white plinths.
Similarly striking and a favourite with fairgoers was Stuart Shave/Modern Art, which indeed won this year’s Stand Prize for outstanding presentation by a gallery, combining Yngve Holen’s washing machine, acetate, model airplane sculptures with Mark Flood’s Rothko pixelated paintings.
Another prizewinner was Rachel Rose who won the Frieze Artist Award 2015, which allows an emerging artist to realise a major commission at Frieze London as part of Frieze Projects. Rose created a scale-model, come-Alice-in-Wonderland version, of the fair structure, within which, once visitors had ‘shrunk’ and crawled through small doors, light and sound played further with their sensory perceptions. There was a noticeable calm around the installation – perhaps being able to tower over the roof of its facsimile provided an antidote to any moments when the scale of full size Frieze becomes overwhelming.
Interior view from Frieze Artist Award 2015 winner Rachel Rose’s installation. Photo: Guy Sangster Adams
The joy of Frieze is one never knows what one might find around each corner, and the differences between what one finds are excitingly extreme. At Carlos/Ishikawa, in the Frieze Focus area of the fair which features new and emerging galleries and is curated by Raphael Gygax and Jacob Proctor, the gruesome-slash-cuddly slashed soft toy remains of Ed Fornieles’ Amalia Ulman cat alter ego, platypus avatar, and Instagram-famous fox littered the floor; consumed by the technology which gave them life.
Whilst there was something wonderfully serene about Galerie Kamel Mennour’s solo presentation of French artist Camille Henrot – the pale grey walls, the pastel greens, blues, and pinks of her paintings and bronze of her sculptures transporting one to a Paris of one’s imagination and also a pre-echo of the relative calm of Frieze Masters.
As last year, a particular stand-out exhibitor at Frieze Masters, which ran from 14th to 18th October, is now in its fourth year and brings together several thousand years of art from 130 galleries, was Helly Nahmad. Working with a set designer, Nahmad created a world within a world with Jean Dubuffet – The Asylum – a series of highly evocative and detailed room sets evoking the psychiatric hospital that housed many of the Art Brut artists he championed. Similarly inventive and innovative was The Gallery of Everything whose exhibition of Martin Ramirez and Josef Karl Radler lead visitors though curtained archways, to inner rooms, and ultimately to The Bar of Everything to be served cocktails by chic bar staff.
Jean Dubbufet’s Asylum at Helly Nahmad London. Photo: Guy Sangster Adams
The main section of Frieze Masters not only included ambitious and inspiring solo presentations such as David Kordansky Gallery’s exhibition of works by American Colour Field Painter and Lyrical Abstractionist artist, Sam Gilliam, and Galleria Continua’s display of Italian painter, action and object artist, and art theorist, Michelangelo Pistoletto, but also the continuation of a growing trend at the fair of shared stands juxtaposes work from very different periods. One of the most fascinating of which was Karsten Schubert and Tomasso Brothers Fine Art juxtaposition of ancient portrait sculpture and modern masterpieces by Bridget Riley.
The Spotlight section of Frieze Masters, curated for the first time this year by LA based independent curator, Clara M Kim, is dedicated to sole presentations of 20th Century Art, and included arresting international exhibits by Christopher Grimes Gallery of American photographer, writer, filmmaker, theorist and critic, Allan Sekula, Sprovieri of Ukranian fine art photographer, Boris Mikhailov, and Galerie Nathalie Obadia of the Turkish-born Armenian, France-based, conceptual artist, Sarkis.
In leaving either Frieze London or Frieze Masters, or walking the 15 minutes between the two, in walking through The Regent’s Park, as though one is still within a fabulous, organic art installation. The leaves, the trees, the rose gardens, allow one a slow re-emergence into the city beyond the park – time to process and reflect. This is wonderfully aided by the Frieze Sculpture Park – which this year featured 16 works curated by Clare Lilley, including Tony Cragg, Conrad Shawcross, and Dominque Stroobant. The vividly confectionary coloured Dreamy Bathroom by Gary Webb seemed to create a magnetic pull on all those who passed by and indeed the security card beside it spent a long time examining it. Whilst raising one’s focus from Richard Serra’s Lock to the skyline beyond crowned by the sculptural Telecom Tower communicated the time to leave Frieze for another year.
Conrad Shawcross, The Dappled Light of the Sun IV, 2015 (Victoria Miro, London) Photo: Guy Sangster Adams
Guy Sangster Adams is the founding editor of Plectrum – The Cultural Pick, multi-platform lifestyle title including a print magazine, a website featuring both a webzine (with separate content from the print edition) and filmed content on the P-TCP Broadcast Player, and also regular P-TCP Live Edition events. theculturalpick.com