Frieze

Stumbling into Regent’s Park like a boggy-eyed bandit, I slip on a few wet leaves and trip over a twig. It’s my first time at Frieze Art Fair with the purpose of writing about it, and the slips, trips, and rain combined with the sheer vastness of the park triggered a wave of exhaustion - and I hadn’t even seen anything yet. "Frieze," I immediately tweet, "is the sprawling fashion week for the art world."



Thomas Ruff

Apparently, the return of the notorious art fair is in fact smaller this year. But with over 150 galleries from 30 countries, a sculpture park, talks, films, tours and projects, all of which coincide with Frieze and Frieze Masters, you won’t exactly be left with want of more. (In fact, I had to spread my explorations across two days.)


Danilo Correale


Uwe Kowski

Anything you could ever want to see - and more importantly, everything you never thought you’d want to see - can be found at Frieze. In fact, it became so overwhelming I gave up trying to construct prose-like notes about everything around me that insistently splattered themselves excitably across my eyes, and instead opted for short phrases that summed up as much as possible as quickly as possible before I went to lie down under a tree to catch my breath, or find - or lose - myself in the press lounge. Here are a few examples:

1. An upright matchstick, and what I think is a block of cheese, protrude from the inside of a giant pair of shoes that lie in the middle of the floor.
2. Boobs, abstract contortions, distorted heads, flower power and shiny things.
3. Jeff Koons, naturally - a welcome predictability.
4. A half open door shows flashing neon lights through the gaps but is somehow also playing dance music? Where are the wires for this thing?
5. "perhaps LOVE is essential because it’s unnecessary".



6. "to forget" is painted on the floor and I’m standing on it. Am I standing on art? Is that the point? Am I the forgotten or the forgetting? I forget.
7. Tracey Emin’s bed, a reminder of the follies that haunt our dreams.
8. I need Joseph Kosuth’s neon works in my room.
9. A giant womb by Jennifer Rubell that you can sit in. Either we are supposed to give birth to ourselves over and over again, or we all come from the same mother. Perhaps it's both.
10. ‘I like men who are real men, not the silly longhaired and perfumed types you get all over England these days. I like a rough, often cruel man who makes me feel like a woman’. Think about this later, and consider ending things with Jamie.
11. "Dunno", Urs Fischer (below). Ironically, I dunno either. But I like it.





And on, and on, and on it goes. You turn a corner, and there’s more. Go outside, you’ll find something else out there too. There are also two specialist sections: "Focus" is dedicated to galleries up to 10 years old presenting projects specifically conceived for Frieze, and "Frame", tailored for young galleries showing solo artist presentations.



Photographs of people, places, objects, the abstract are suspended in carefully tailored paths; paintings of people inspired by Japanese art nod to Eastern influences; abstract paintings, 3D paintings, shouty paintings and silent paintings; installations; 3D metallic objects sticking out of walls; guillotine blades; drums; TV screens playing video-art on loop; works with titles like "Personality Crisis", "Ourselves in black holes like small silences", and works without titles at all because the meaning is within us; the big, the small, the outlandish and the reserved.

Seating is scattered throughout (thankfully), where you will see people staring intently at whatever’s directly in front of them, making phone-calls about how they’ve suddenly been inspired to dye silk, or else overhear conversations that go something like, "she’s conceptual, so in some ways the appearance doesn’t matter - as long as she has a concept, she can get away with it." "I don’t care, it’s still a bit shit." "Oh open your MIND, this is ART."



The sculpture park includes works from both Frieze London and Frieze Masters. As you wander through the English Gardens, you encounter 13th century gargoyles opposite Jaume Plensa’s dimension-bending "Chloe" (below). Frieze Film, Frieze Music, and Frieze Projects have all commissioned artists to create works that are purely to be exhibited rather than bought, which adds a further layer to one of the world’s leading art fairs, now in its 11th year. Meanwhile, Frieze Talks include keynote lectures from artists and writers debating everything from ethics to production.



Exploring as many approaches to art as possible means that now trying to condense the sheer expanse of this year’s Frieze into a sensible-sized post is as difficult as trying to fold up the Fair Guide whilst trying to not walk into sporadically hung installations. (Impossible, that is.) I will say this, though - it didn’t at all seem ‘smaller’. In fact, it seemed bigger and brighter than ever. But don’t just take my word for it - get yourself a ticket (in advance - they sell out quickly on the day) and go lose yourself in this labyrinthine maze of an art fair with its spiralled corridors and ink puddles whilst noshing on some sushi. Just take a break now and again - if you stay inside too long, you might start interpreting everything as art on your way out of the park without knowing where Frieze ended or began. Or you may never actually find your way out at all. Which wouldn’t be all that bad, I suppose - you could always spend the night curled up in the adult-sized womb installation or sneak into the champagne lounge.

All images courtesy of Frieze