Oct 07 2016

Highlights from Frieze London 2016

by Cleo Roberts

The booth of Rome’s Frutta gallery was transformed into a mock Italian trattoria as part of the fair’s Focus section. Seen here is a detail of SANTO TOLONE, LAUREN KEELEY and JACOPO MILIANI’s set up for the installation. All photos by Cleo Roberts for ArtAsiaPacific.

The booth of Rome’s Frutta gallery was transformed into a mock Italian trattoria as part
of the fair’s Focus section. Seen here is a detail of SANTO TOLONE, LAUREN KEELEY and
JACOPO MILIANI’s set up for the installation.

Also at the fair’s Focus section was JON RAFMAN’s, Transdimensional Serpent (2016), a virtual-reality
video installation, shown at the booth of London’s Seventeen gallery.

View of ShanghArt Gallery’s booth, which had a solo presentation of paintings by Beijing-based artist OUYANG CHUN, which depict grotesque imagery that speak to the psychological impacts of living in contemporary China.

Tanzanian artist LUBAINA HIMID’s painting Le Rodeur: Exchange (2016) on view at the booth of London’s Hollybush Gardens.

View of the booth of Glasgow’s The Modern Institute.

New sculptures by American artist EDDIE MARTINEZ were on display at the booth of London’s Timothy Taylor gallery.

Assorted portraits of iconic figures such as poet Fernando Pessoa and singer-songwiter
John Lennon were created out of sand and other pigments on wood by German artist
PETER BÖHNISCH. Installation view at the stand of Berlin’s Contemporary Fine Arts.

David Zwirner gallery (London/New York) had a multi-artist stand at Frieze London. Here in the foreground, is the late ALICE NEEL’s Portrait of Hartley Stockton Neel (1981), while in the background is Calando (2016), an oil by linen by abstract Op-Art painter BRIDGET RILEY.

An assortment of WILLIAM KENTRIDGE’S stainless-steel silhouettes were on display at Galleria Lia
Rumma from Milan. The selection here included Small Silhouette (Sewing Machine) (2015),
Small Silhouette 72 (Coffee Pot) (2016) and Silhouette 50 (Bath) (2016).

Viewers watch Mumbai and Los Angeles-based artist NEHA CHOKSI’s installation, Stone Breath
Mountain Dust (2016) at Mumbai’s Project 88, which had a solo booth of the artist.

NEHA CHOKSI‘s installation, Stone Breath Mountain Dust (2016) at the booth of Mumbai’s Project 88.

A gallerist in a moment of calm at the booth of Tokyo’s Misako & Rosen.

This year Frieze London fell for monochrome and portraiture—whether on canvas or a sly selfie on an iPhone. Stepping over the Regent’s Park threshold, British artist Edmund de Waal’s first solo presentation with Gagosian London set the tone for the fair. The ceramist’s installation of delicate porcelain vessels, contrasted by new, dark works using graphite, silver and alabaster, found echoes in the works displayed across over the fair’s 160 participating galleries. Hans op de Beeck’s white installation, created in collaboration with New York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery, was consistently thronging with groups posing in its blank booth, in front of a whitened bookcase replete with skulls, burnt candle sticks and an incongruous spray can. Close by, both Tacita Dean’s Et Nubes (2016) at London’s Frith Street Gallery, an astounding chalky cloud formation on two vast blackboard panels (not dissimilar from her slate pieces in her current solo show at the gallery), and William Kentridge’s assortment of black, stainless steel silhouettes at Milan’s Galleria Lia Rumma, were lessons in simplicity.

In the Focus section, dedicated to younger galleries, things were kept polished yet not without a splash of experimental fun. Frutta, a young gallery from Rome, brought together six of its artists to create a sociable, mock-up trattoria. Near the black-tie waiter were Lauren Keeley’s tables—set for two, with generous plates of black-and-white pasta and the isolated limbs of lovers nestled underneath—which complimented Santo Tolone’s amusing spinning nudes. Rather more gimmicky was Jon Rafman’s virtual-reality installation at London’s Seventeen gallery, a cavort through a fantasy white landscape, which merits more attention for the amusing positions it put visitors in. There was certainly no need for the Live Art stage opposite the stand.

Recoiling from what may well be a fad, Alex Katz’s impressive portraits stretched out at the booths of New York-based Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Paris’ Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Artist Peter Böhnisch’s astounding sand-based grid of personalities, which included John Lennon, at Berlin’s Contemporary Fine Arts, along with Hans-Peter Feldmann’s hugely popular Woman with Lipstick (date unknown), showed that there will always be an appetite for the artist’s hand. Here’s a look around Frieze London 2016.