Frieze has ironically brought cold weather this year, which we’ve managed to avoid gallantly during this autumnal period, with some of us even wearing shorts up until last week.
Another tempest in the air is the influx of many well-heeled, tanned and rested visitors to this year’s Frieze circus, which is more cologned than ever. Fagan and his gang may have had a field day, but in this contactless era, QR codes are king; no screenshots are allowed.
This listomania is my selection of the arresting, alluring, arousing and aliterating spaces allocated to the young galleries giving the doth of the establishment cap to enter the gladiatorial commercial arena that is Frieze, The cool in IMG’s omnipresent empire, who own more events than the impact of American foreign policy.
Gathering (London, Ibiza, Cologne) Artist: Christelle Oyiri
It would be inefficient not to start with the most efficient, stylised and chic solo presentation offering in the F zone, which is helmed and guided by the charming braggadocio of Mr Flick. He brings a forward-looking eye in his presentation of Green Machine Christelle Oyiri, sister, via a similar swathe to Charli XCX and her brat shade. A truly verdant offering, the sum of its parts creating a slice of retro futurist mise-en-scene in the middle of Regent’s Park.
Marfa (Beirut) – Artist: Omar Fakhoury
Marfa isn’t in Texas, not that Marfa, the one with the great Alisdair McLellan music video, but this embodiment of Marfa’s creativity comes via Beirut and the presentation of Omar Fakhoury’s evocative, tarot-infused, esoteric figurative work. It feels like a collective shake-down about the power of nature, animals, and the devil swirled together in a cocktail of folklore served in an eerie glass. Well mixed!
Madragoa (Lisbon) Artist: Luis Lazaro Matos
I won’t lie, I was drawn to this forlorn gentleman slightly stage left, and the art provided a more dynamic background than the foreground. He seems a bit glum or has collected the frieze flu, an elite variant. I also enjoyed the Fantasia-inspired approach to populating the booth. Delectable magical unrealism. What’s not to love with two standing dolphin things dancing and spitting on each other whilst floating near some fun-looking planets magnetised with vibrant colours. Pretty solid if you ask me.
LLano (Mexico) Artist: Enrique Lopes LLamas
This spread of sculptures, objects and signage immediately threw me into a Mike Kelley-shaped squall (he also celebrated Halloween with the revelry it deserves). Both these Artists are aligned in material and aesthetic themes; however, Mr Llamas appears to marinate the everyday with a substantial measure of surrealism and symbolism representing a dreamlike state, whereas Kelley extracted the surrealism from the udder of the everyday, in less forced but found, collected and distilled circumstances.
Top Photo: Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix Artist: Delaine Le Bas
As you can see, the devil is helping to invigilate this installation by Turner prize nominee Delaine Le Bas. Lucifer’s presence adds a specific cache and a sense of forewarning to the stark messages adorned around multiple surfaces. This shade of Warhammer red on creme coloured canvas evokes tableaus of Victorian surgeons trying their hardest, but invariably causing fatal blood loss. Perhaps the point of the whole thing is to scream at the world via the aesthetic language of how an informed 11-year-old ( a young Greta Thunberg type) might make protest assets. People in loose, cream-coloured robes guided this language, mingling with Friezers, and so it was as if the messages in the installation had legs and had taken human form via these messengers. One of these messengers was called Lincoln, and I hope to meet him again, as he had the answers!
Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix Artist: Delaine Le Bas
Petrine Artist: Alina Rentsch
I’d think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who loves getting lost in a visual conundrum. The strange satisfaction of being tricked, but like a fly transfixed by the naked light bulb, it’s pleasurable to luxuriate in the illusion. Without getting stuck down a rabbit hole, I was floored by it, but think it could prove fatal without supervision or the right collector. Petrine Artist: Alina Rentsch