Last weekend was the weekend of the year for art admirers in London, with numerous events and fairs being held in the megalopolis. The Frieze art fair is the leading and biggest one. What draw my attention were the projects commissioned by the fair and some examples of this years’ trend to photography and sculpture.
A big contemporary art fair is like a hangar full of toys. The quantity and diversity of the pieces shown is vertiginous. The objective is to catch the attention of potential buyers, so art galleries tend to highlight distinctive, easy to love pieces of art. The result for a mere visitor like me is a dense and very enjoyable experience.
The difficulty for the fair is to put all this quantity together and to add a little something, an identity. In that respect, I think the projects commissioned by the fair, and curated by Neville Wakefield, were a big success. They constantly challenged the status of the art fair, between nature (Frieze is held in a park), art, politics and sales. They were also very accessible. You can read more about them on this article from Adrian Searle. I loved Illusion by Jeppe Hein. He placed trees at the entrance which very slowly revolve on themselves. It is only after a few minutes people queuing outside the fair noticed their rotation, leading to a awaken connection with nature which already surrounds the fair.
Here is a random selection of works exhibited at the fair :
Etat imaginé, Eric Baudelaire, 2004 (Juana de Aizpuru gallery)
The photography manages to combine an idealistic vision of nature with hyperrealism.
My Moscow by Sergey Bratkov (Regina gallery)
Colorful and sensitive pictures of Moscow.
Perpetual void by Petroc Sesti, 2008 (Paul Kasmin gallery)
A lot of flawless, plastic sculptures are on the spotlight. Visually dramatic with their expressive optic effects, they force the admiration of visitors, and the flashlights of their cameras…
Lost and found – playstation by Vadim Fishkin, 2007 (Gregor Podnar gallery)
A lot of playfulness in this sculpture, which doesn`t stop it being an excellent support for religious philosophical debates.
Rectangle inside ¾ cylinder by Dan Graham, 2008 (Hauser and Wirth)
Let’s not forget the sculpture park with this great example of Dan Graham’s work, dialoging with reality and people through its sophisticated mirrors.
