“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.
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.
And some shows around town…
