Frieze Fair in London: Encounters at eye level

Instead, “Little is beautiful” appears on the 24. In the edition of the London art fair Frieze the motto “Being big is better” applies. At least as far as painting is concerned, which this time clearly dominates sculpture in the competition of the arts. Wherever you look into the corridors of the enormous tent, under which around 170 galleries from more than 40 countries are gathered, the view falls on meter-high canvases. Many come fresh from the easel and found heel on the first day. These include – for more than one million dollars each – six large-sized, colors and abstract forms in wild turmoil bringing together new paintings by Albert Oehlen at the stand of the Gagosian Gallery, as well as two oil paintings almost three meters wide by David Zwirner: one from a series of highly material-looking satin cones by the Belgian painter Michaël Borremans (1.5 million dollars) and a surrealist bathing scene (400,000 dollars) by the only 28-year-old American Sasha Gordon, who identified Time magazine as one of the 100 globally rising stars of the year. Young art in confrontation with older Colombian Ilana Savdie also loves large formats. At White Cube, the painter, who is better known in the USA, now has a European platform with a solo presentation. The gallery shows her works in dialogue with small-scale works by artists such as Gustav Klimt, Leonor Fini, Alexander or Hans Bellmer, whose sweeping, brightly coloured compositions of acrylic, oil and beeswax are inspired. As with Savdie, whose five up to $300,000 paintings are all sold, the Brazilian Márcia Falcão is also focused on exploring her own body. Her five works, which cost between 30,000 and 60,000 dollars, were immediately snatched away by buyers, one by a German institution. At the Fortes d’Aloia & Gabriel stand, Falcão’s canvases painted in dense, earthy tones are the first thing the visitor sees when entering the Frieze. The prominent placement of the gallery, based in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, signals the fair’s interest in identity issues. This is also stated at the parallel Frieze Masters with an LGBTQ motif curated by the art historian Anke Kempkes under the same term "Queer Modernism", which was exhibited in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen last year. This framework includes two paintings by Lotte Laserstein, sold by Agnews, as well as a selection of portraits from the estate of Alice Neel, compiled by Victoria Miro and Zwirner. Three of them were sold for a total of five million dollars on the first day. Audiences are also changing The diversity of identity is accompanied by the desire to expand the international reach, especially into the global South. The latter is reflected in the increased presence of galleries and artists from these regions of the world as well as in the composition of the audience. VIP bookings from Brazil have increased by 36 percent since last year. From the Middle East and North Africa, from Southeast Asia and the Southeast Asian region, a good 20 percent more VIPs have registered this time. The increase in Indian galleries since 2009, when Project 88 from Mumbai was the first participant from the subcontinent, is also strongly noticeable. The need for diversity is also reflected in institutional acquisitions. Thanks to a £30,000 annual fund for the promotion of young artists through public collections launched at the opening of the Frieze, the Abbot Hall Museum in Kendal was able to acquire three works by Okiki Akinfe, which deals with the representation and perception of black British identity from a feminist perspective. The Contemporary Art Society, which collaborates with Frieze to help regional museums purchase contemporary art, has enabled the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester to acquire three works by female artists, including a pencil drawing by Gala Porras-Kim at Spüth Magers, which explores how the museum classification of objects determines the cultural-historical narrative. Frieze London and Frieze Masters, The Regent’s Park, London, until 18 October, combined ticket 98 pounds