“Brexit means Brexit” says new UK Prime Minister Theresa May, somewhat gnomically. (Actually, Brexit seems to mean broken). Anyway, you can still do useful things with stuff that is stuffed-up. Like go to Frieze. Because with the British Pound taking a pounding, the art is cheap(er)!
Frieze this year was the best yet. There was much less of the not-so-good stuff and garish stuff and expensive crazy stuff than in previous years. Less neon, less bling, less big pictures of things Donald Trump wants to grab with his tiny little hands. It was more brainy and subtle. And there were buyers from everywhere (though as one Shanghai gallery complained, sometimes there were also buyers who didn’t hand over the cash as promised. They must have brexited.) And sales were good—lots of satisfied dealer faces to bring some sunshine into autumnal London.
China was present with a series of solo shows, with Yu Honglei at Antenna Space, Ouyang Chun at ShanghART, Chen Wei at Leo Xu Projects, Liu Chuang at Magician Space, and Zhang Peili at Boers Li at Frieze Masters. Yet given how many Chinese people in the art world either live in London or regularly visit, whether artists, curators or collectors, this year felt a little quiet as far as China is concerned, though not for a want of collectors, particularly young one. No, the shows just weren’t there. And that gave me a premonition, perhaps, of a more worrying trend—the debacle of the UK voting to put their collective heads in the sand seems to be affecting how people see the world. There is an eldritch light in Britain, and slowly it will dim the London art world too.
But not yet. Around town there were, of course, all sorts of great shows. Philippe Parreno at Tate Modern Turbine Hall (so also at Frieze), Jeff Koons at Newport Street Gallery (so also at Frieze), along with Celia Paul at Victoria Miro Gallery, Neo Rauch at David Zwirner, and Ed Ruscha at Gagosian. You can’t see it all, and that is part of the allure—it’s plain impossibility. What is to be noted, however, is how the London art world continues to withdraw back to its traditional center of Mayfair. The great East London experiment is not over, but it’s not healthy either. But for Victoria Miro in Wharf Road and Maureen Paley, the East is looking thin. So, now for Paris and FIAC and Artissima and Contemporary Istanbul and ART021 and West Bund and Art Taipei and on, past the U.S. presidential election—Trumpxit?—to Miami Beach. You can smell the salt already.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (Esther Schipper, Berlin)
One of the special features was to celebrate the art of the nineties…because Frieze the mag is getting middle aged now and can look back on its youth and complain how things aren’t the same as they used to be. Above, a reading room by Gonzalez-Foerster.
Yu Honglei at Antenna Space
Martha Araújo at Galeria Martins (São Paulo)
Franz West at Almine Rech
Melik Ohanian at Galerie Chantal Crousel
Ouyang Chun at ShanghART (Shanghai)
Paula Rego at Marlborough (at the gallery a set previously owned by the public Hayward Gallery was on sale…for GBP 12 million)
Liu Chuang at Magician Space
Chen Wei at Leo Xu Projects
Hauser & Wirth parlour games
Haegue Yang at Kukje
Tatiana Trouve at Galerie Perrotin
Latifa Echakhch at Kamel Mennour (Paris)
Marcel Broodthaers at Michael Werner
Yuri Pattison was honored by Frieze Projects, with is disturbing work on video monitoring (Mother’s Tank Station)
Alex Katz at Gavin Brown’s enterprise
The Modern Institute booth (Glasgow)
Martin Honert at Matthew Marks Gallery (New York)
And some shows around town…
Ed Ruscha at Gagosian (Grosvenor Hill)
Shezad Dawood at Timothy Taylor (London)
- Rui Cheung (House of St.Barnabas)
House of St Barnabas in Soho, private members club
Bruce Nauman’s “Natural Light, Blue Light Room” reconstructed from its 1971 Vancouver iteration, at Blain Southern, Hanover Square
Sarah Lucas’s cats with Elizabeth Peyton portraits looking on, unofficially at Sadie Coles
Takuro Kuwata solo show at Alison Jacques Gallery, Berners Street London
