After a long hot summer, the trees are turning, the woollens are coming out, and the days are drawing in. It feels like the beginning of term, so it must be time for Frieze London, the now annual international Art fest in Regent’s Park that brings the art world together after a summer of the Venice Biennale and lotus-eating on various Mediterranean beaches. Featuring artists from all around the world, from Indonesia to Brazil, from the Ukraine to the US, the fair is an example of how contemporary art, despite these difficult geopolitical times, still functions as cultural and fiscal capital. According to Frieze committee member, Cédric Fauq, Curator of Contemporary International Art at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, ‘It’s important that Frieze echoes what’s happening in the broader contemporary art landscape beyond the market… it needs to challenge the eye… and twist the brain’.
So, what is showing? Well, this year’s commission for the Frieze Artist Award is a first-time collaboration with Google Arts and Culture by the Athens-based artist Theo Triantafyllidis. His all-singing, all-dancing The Feral Metaverse (Spider) ─ is a giant sculptural arachnid that acts as an adult play centre and climbing frame, where visitors can clamber up to indulge in online games on individual screens. Well, so far, so predictable ─ art that appropriates technological innovation in a world increasingly dominated by AI is par for the course. But what interested me, as I walked down the supermarket aisles of artworks, is that despite this populist tick-box piece, this year, for the first time in a long while, there appears to be far more painting and works on paper on show. Not the ironic jelly-bean technicolour stuff of the last two decades, but work that is quieter, deeper, and more reflective, that relies principally on the artist’s eye, hand, and aesthetic sensibility.
