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Crowded. This is maybe the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of an art fair. For sure, that “crowded” became a more real, tangible sensation during Frieze London 2012, whose historical tent in Reagent’s Park, London, became one of many to visit this year. For the first time, the attendees had to visit another fair within the fair, located at the north of the park, called Frieze Masters, a new-born sister event which featured art made before 2000. |
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Anish Kapoor, Untitled 2012, Fibreglass and paint. Courtesy of LISSON GALLERY
Crowded. This is maybe the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of an art fair. For sure, that “crowded” became a more real, tangible sensation during Frieze London 2012, whose historical tent in Reagent’s Park, London, became one of many to visit this year. For the first time, the attendees had to visit another fair within the fair, located at the north of the park, called Frieze Masters, a new-born sister event which featured art made before 2000.
Such a double-fairs effect seemed to produce more confusion than to effectively challenge the notion of Master, as Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, directors of the fair, intended to do. And this confusion came not only from the visitors, but also from dealers and collectors themselves, whose reactions to the big news of the year are quite ambivalent. Belgian collector Mimi Dusseldorf said about Frieze Masters: “It was like looking at museum pieces. It’s better for me here as I am looking for contemporary art. But it was worth seeing than buying.” Alongside, British collector David Roberts admitted: “There are great things at Frieze Master, but I am not so sure the crossover buying concept will work. I can see that someone who buys contemporary art would buy a 1960 Yves Klein, but I am not so sure they will buy a 16th century work”.
In addition, visitors had extra subsections in each fair to wrap their heads around. Frieze Master contained Spotlight, a section of solo shows of artists from the 20th century. Frieze London included Frame, solo-artists projects at galleries under six-years old, and Focus, an export from Frieze New York’s first edition dedicated to galleries that have been around since 2001. The distinctiveness of the sections, one located at the north of the main structure and the other at the south, was also the result of a different curatorial advise- the other big news of this tenth edition. While Slotover and Sharp co-directed the glorious whole of the main fair, which counts 175 participating galleries, Jo Stella Sawicka had been called to organize the 20 galleries at Focus and the 21 galleries at Frame separately.
Paul McCarthy, White Snow Head, 2012, silicone, fiberglass, steel. Courtesy of HAUSER & WIRTH Gallery
To tell the truth, architectural accuracy enjoyed in New York last May was missed, where the snake-shaped tent designed by the Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO-IL)- ensured a proper space for so many galleries and such an attendance, with much more breath for the art itself. The temporary structure designed by architects Carmody Groarke was maybe too basic to house with the monumentality of the new apparatus the fair had this year, with this monumentality being not only in the numbers of the galleries and projects, but in the artworks themselves. Most of those artworks were signed by such great names as Paul McCarthy, Sarah Sze, Thomas Saraceno, Damien Hirst, Ernesto Neto, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Bruce Neumann, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, Haegue Yang, Sarah Lucas, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jason Rhoades, Carsten Holler, Mario Merz, Andreas Gursky, Jean Dubuffet, Klara Kristalova, David La Chapelle and so forth.
David La Chapelle, Seismic Shift, 2012, chromogenic print. Courtesy of PAUL KASMIN GALLERY.
Thanks to those names, such confusion from the fair did not seem to affect the sales at all. Galleries report strong sales and high levels of energy in the contemporary market. Even with doubling the fair size, Frieze Master has made London an international melting point for the widest of art audiences. Hauser and Wirth sold Paul McCarthy’s White Snow Haed (2012) for $1.3 million, whereas its booth at Frieze Master was placing works on paper by Eva Hesse priced from $320,000 to $2 million. Not as expected for White Cube, the sale of Damien Hirst’s Destruction Dreamscape (2012) sold for $500,000, while Victoria Miro had similar success with Yayoi Kusama’s Universe RYKP (2012) for the same amount. 2012 was a very good year for New York-based galleries such as Andrew Kreps, who sold a multi-paneled installation by Ricci Albenda for $200,000, Lehamann Maupin, who sold five editions of Teresita Fernandez’s Golden (2012) for $75,000 each, and Tracey Emin’s Legs moving (2012) that sold for $120,000. This year proved staggering figures, especially in the time of a worldwide economic crisis- a fact similarly confusing to this year’s Frieze London itself.
