If you live in London and do this job, you can’t miss Frieze fair!
And I, I respected the rules! I was there over the weekend, Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th of October. One day would have been too short.
The edition of Frieze 2019, is certainly my favorite compared to the last three editions. There was a different energy, more alive, brighter, every single stand was in tune with the next one. The fair seemed to me, in my opinion, complete. This year’s Frieze London has decidedly painterly feel. From Day-Glo Sterling Ruby canvases on Gagosian’s stand to Donna Huanca’s oceanic painting installation at Simon Lee gallery, brushwork is making a comeback. Don’t be outdone too, sculpture, photography, installations, paper, new proposals, there was something for everyone, but without excess. A fair also open to political and environmental issues. Brexit uncertainty and escalating political instability. “When a recession looms, everyone goes back to painting. The artist Sheraz Dawood, who is presenting at Frieze Live at the fair called the University of NonDualism. This edition was edited by Diana Campbell Betancourt, to whom I congratulate.
In these two days I made a list of my favorite stands and artists!
Bernard Piffaretti artist at Kate McGarry Gallery, the stand is beautiful and the artist is very interesting. Patrick Goddard at the Seventeen Gallery London. At the Alison Jacques Gallery I saw some beautiful drawings by Dorothea Tanning, from 1966 to 1988. Nice is the stand of the Lisson Gallery and very nice to see Joyce Pensato, but not only, also a very good and great Stanley Whitney. Lia Rumma Gallery of Milan stands and very interesting artists. Victoria Miro with artist Grayson Perry.
The stand and artist I appreciated most was the Simon Lee Gallery (London) with Bolivian-American artist Donna Huanca, with a new immersive installation including installation painting, sculpture, sound and scent. The presentation at Frieze combines a number of linked elements of the artist’s practice, to create a holistic immersive experience for the viewer, who is invited to navigate the booth through dunes of pure white sand. Huanca’s unique aesthetic absorbs a network of references, which center is around the human body and its relationship with space, gender and identity, as well as the cultural, social and linguistic traditions of its Inca-Andean ancestry. Via her interdisciplinary practice, in which performance plays an integral part. Huanca craft a visual language rooted in collaboration and innovation.
Huanca’s two-dimensional painting practice is fundamentally connected to the performative elements of her work. In six new “Skin” paintings, photographs of her bodies are blown up and transposed to canvas, where they are re-worked with paint. During this process, Huanca engages with the colours and forms, resulting in an interaction between the ephemeral choreography of performance art and the performance of painting. Three new sculptures installed alongside the paintings, their totemic proportions and anthropomorphic to the environment is amplified by a single-channel sound piece and a custom scent inspired by the fragrance of Palo Santo, a holy tree native to South America widely used in ritual purification ceremonies.
Bye Bye Frieze see you next year !!