Frieze Art Fair and Frieze Masters, London, October 2015

This year’s Frieze Art Fair and Frieze Masters showed a lot of up and coming artists and new work by those we already are familiar with.

My favorit work at Frieze Masters was a mirror work by Italian Arte Povera artist Michelangelo Pistoletto It is not worth introducing this widly acknowledged and renowned artist that is one of the main representatives of the Italian Arte Povera movement. A counterposition between Arte Povera and a contemporary artist would lead me directly to my favorit art work at Frieze Art in the main space, Self-Portrait (bath) by British artist Tracey Emin represented by Jay Joplin and to see at the White Cube Gallery booth. It is a coincidence that Tracey Emin goes into an entirely new direction namely neon light installation and sculpture and I am happy to see this because I am planning a show that would present Tracey Emin. Her work not only can be referenced with Arte Povera’s Michelangelo Pistoletto but also even more closely to Mario and Marisa Merz as we also already engaged in discussion on Facebook. in addition the work can be linked to Dan Flavin art historically based in minimalism and concept art, or to more contemporary artists like Jonathan Monk, represented by Lisson Gallery, London and Milan.

Tracey Emin, White Cube Gallery

Overall the art fair was well frequented and had a few other interesting works like Mark Leckey which could be referenced to Takashi Murakami with his huge blow up cat or also to Jeff Koons.

Mark Leckey

Another reference to Jeff Koons would be the silver shiny pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama, which she already started five years ago at Victoria Miro or two years ago at a high street store in London where she also produced a limited line of hand bags later in the same year.The interesting or unusual part of this years’ fairs was the lack of most original concept and minimalism art.

Yayoi Kusama

Anri Sala also worked with sculpture this time in contrary to his usual filmic works. A snare drum kit was silently almost non-audible drumming away on the booth ceiling with a counter-positioned second identical drum kit at the entrance of the booth this time standing on the floor with drum sticks looking like bones at their ends.

Anri Sala

The Frieze stand award was awarded to a small London Gallery for their exceptional presentation of little airplanes and photographic works that looked like faint-coloured Rothko’s.

Frieze Booth Award 2015

Frieze Booth Award 2015

Lisson Gallery in Bell Street showed a young artist with a solo show in both their spaces and here unlike in Sala’s work a drum kit was played by a real person in the gallery space.

Ryan Gander, Fieldwork, Lisson Gallery, London

Lisson Gallery also had a well designed booth at the fair with two major Anish Kapoor dishes and a work by Ai Wei Wei who is as well represented by Lisson Gallery and currently has a retrospective at Royal Academy in the heart of London which unfortunately was too much being already lengthy at the fair and at Lisson.

Anish Kapoor, Lisson Gallery, London

Anish Kapoor, Lisson Gallery, London

Ai Wei Wei, Lisson Gallery, London

Looking forward to next year’s fair and please get in contact if you would like to get a more detailed insight which would be to in-depth here.

All my best and hope you enjoy the photographic documentation if you could not make it to London this time.

Daniela Haberz, M.A.
Independent Art Critic and Contemporary Art Adviser