Everyone was in agreement at the opening of this year's Frieze: it's very hot. Because the London contemporaries fair, whose American offspring goes into the seventh year, has missed a new roof. Instead of breathing in the long, narrow hose that has meandered through the park on Randall's Island, you can breathe more freely in five spacious tents that divide the mass into different sections. Only climatically, the new architecture still has to prove itself at a good thirty degrees outside temperature. A second innovation provides a breath of fresh air: The gallery scene of the West Coast, which is strongly represented next to the East Coast on the Frieze, can look forward to its own show. which will take place in Los Angeles in the Paramount film studios from 14 to 17 February 2019.
The trend to Los Angeles has been emerging for some time. The art scene is flourishing, a lot of patronizing money is flowing into the museums, and internationally operating galleries such as SprüthMagers have opened their branches there. This is also noticeable on New York's Frieze: out of around 190 galleries from more than thirty countries, more than twenty are coming from the Californian art capital this time.
One of them is the David Kordansky Gallery, which brings the Norwegian Torbjørn Rødland - and has landed a hit: For each $ 14,000 were eight different color prints Rødlands have to make the stand became a magnet at the preview. The star of his photographs is the human hand with a lavish finger, her fingers spread wide: with the conditioning of the gaze that comes from Rødland's sexualized pictorial language of advertising, he meets a nerve in the current Frieze edition.
The big New York galleries are also compulsorily strong. At Richard Gray, Theaster Gates comes up with an installation. He has populated a display case from a former museum collection with an ensemble of exotic objects - and thus cheers the seemingly historically trained view of a different view of things ($ 450,000). In Jack Shainman, Hank Willis Thomas is represented by the larger than life torso of a metal Oscar statuette, which, with two basketballs on its outstretched hands, examines the iconic representation of the black body, beyond skin color.
London, hometown of the Frieze, with its galleries, as always, a lion's share of the fair: Stephen Friedman has a real eye-catcher with two works by Kehinde Wiley, who has portrayed the Obamas (each sold at 100,000 / $ 150,000, both) At his stand opposite Friedman at Fredericks & Freiser Jocelyn Hobbie stages with two of her very fine, cool oil portraits of fictional women ($ 9500 each) at the same time the refraction of the specifically white gaze and the classic male gaze.
In addition to the central area with these participants, the centerpiece of the show is the extremely dynamic "Frame" section, which features solo shows by nineteen young galleries from all over the world. At just under $ 8,000 per berth, there are very accommodating stand rental rates that are affordable for junior galeries. Among them are again two hot tips from Los Angeles: Château Shatto debuts with the pin sharp oil studies after photo template of the New York-based artist Van Hanos ($ 15,000). The gallery Anat Ebgi has come with Jordan Nassar, whose embroidery works adopt traditional techniques from the West Bank ($ 6000 to $ 10,000). Cooper Cole from Toronto, also for the first time on the Frieze, sold all of the insect-like,Finally, a political profile emerges from two themes: the selection of galleries and their programs places more emphasis on the presence of women, and it is noticeably more colorful and visibly queer . Thus, the fair is also in line with the trend that New York's latest show in the New York scene has set with its show on gender and queerness.Striking is also the continued interest for David Hockney. Not only since the acclaimed retrospective in the Metropolitan Museum, the eighty-year-old artist is highly valued by collectors; he is represented at Frieze with two solo presentations. While New York's Pace Gallery is showing more recent works painted on the iPad ($ 26,000 each) sold out within the first three hours, Offer Waterman of London has drawings of hockneys from the late 1960s; the highest price is $ 815,000. Not quite enough with the sums that Thaddaeus Ropac reports for the sale of two Baselitz paintings ($ 500,000 to $ 700,000), and for a work by Robert Rauschenberg ($ 725,000).
— By Michael Watzka