Once Subversive, Frieze Opens in a Changing London
Damien Hirst’s 2008-9 shark-in-formaldehyde piece, ‘‘Heaven,’’ in an exhibition at the Mayfair dealer Ordovas.Credit Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2015.
LONDON — Over the past 13 years Frieze has grown into one of the biggest weeks in the art market calendar. The sprawling scale of the event, centered on a five-day fair here, in Regent’s Park, that opens to the public Wednesday, reflects how dramatically London, and its commercial relationship with art, has changed.
The etymology dates to 1988, when a Goldsmiths College student named Damien Hirst organized an exhibition called “Freeze” in the disused offices of the London Port Authority in SE16, a run-down area close to the Thames. That pop-up show of works by 16 young artists including Mr. Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume was visited by influential curators and collectors.
The rest, as we know, is art history.
Today, Frieze Week is a must-attend fixture for many. It combines a destination fair (or two, since the more historical Frieze Masters joined the mix since 2012) with high-end auctions (nine this week, estimated to raise at least $276 million), museum exhibitions and gallery shows.
While Frieze has thrived, SE16, like so many areas of London, has been transformed by luxury redevelopment, much of it bought by overseas investors. The realtor Foxtons is offering a new two-bedroom apartment in the original “Freeze” district for 975,000 pounds, or about $1.5 million.
The fair, which this year features 164 galleries from 27 countries, caters to the same international crowd that attends the previews of Art Basel and the Venice Biennale. Prices for artworks typically range from about $10,000 to $1 million.
“ ‘Frieze’ is no longer a fair where the feeling is young and cutting-edge,” Abigail Asher, a partner in the New York art advisory firm Guggenheim Asher Associates, said in a telephone interview. “The people who descend on London for Frieze Week are looking for more established artists.”
Mr. Hirst’s meteoric rise culminated in September 2008 with the two-day auction of his artworks at Sotheby’s that earned £111.5 million, or roughly $166 million in today’s dollars. Mr. Hirst is no longer the force he was in the market. Instead he has reverted to his role as curator by opening his private museum in south London. But memories of the glory days will be sparked this week by the presence of his 2008-9 shark-in-formaldehyde piece, “Heaven,” in an exhibition at the Mayfair dealer Ordovas.
One of 11 made, and the only left in private hands — which happen to be Mr. Hirst’s — it carries a price that will be disclosed only to wealthy collectors.
Unlike the week of Art Basel in Switzerland or in Miami Beach, London’s Frieze Week lacks a supporting network of well-regarded satellite fairs that showcase emerging galleries and artists (although the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair at Somerset House does give some regional perspective).
The Sunday fair, near Regent’s Park, is the one non-“Frieze”-branded event that attracts serious collectors in search of undiscovered talent. The London gallery Seventeen is one of 25 from 11 countries exhibiting in its sixth edition. An east London gallery specializing in video art, Seventeen will be showing the 2015 video “Untitled (Pressing On),” priced at about $3,000 to $4,500, by the British artist Jimmy Merris, who was born in 1983.
“It’s more experimental,” said David Hoyland, director of Seventeen, in a telephone interview. “I can take risks. I can set the tone for a solo show, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t sell anything.”
Mr. Hoyland, along with many other gallery directors, is concerned about the effect London’s spiraling property prices is having on the artistic life of the city. “Rents have tripled in east London,” Mr. Hoyland said. “You just can’t find cheap spaces anymore. The bottom of the art world pyramid is being eroded.” He added that Mr. Merris can no longer afford to live in London and has moved to Wales.
Similar sentiments were expressed by Michael Elmgreen, the London half of the artist team Elmgreen & Dragset, who are exhibiting new works at Victoria Miro Mayfair. “I don’t think there’s such a strong art scene in London anymore,” Mr. Elmgreen said in an interview. “It’s a theater without actors. The artists aren’t there, but the institutions give amazing shows for the tourists.”
Mr. Elmgreen said he was moving back to Berlin, where his collaborator, Ingar Dragset, lives. The duo’s “Self-Portraits,” at Victoria Miro, copy the museum wall labels of works by artists like David Hockney and Martin Kippenberger and expand them into independent works of art, priced at as much as $61,000.
In Albemarle Street, the Turin dealership Mazzoleni is holding a retrospective of 23 works by the Arte Povera artist Alberto Burri, the subject of a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. These include a trademark 1968 “Rosso Plastica” composition, priced at more than $5.5 million.
Nearby, the Mayfair branch of the New York dealership David Zwirner is holding its first London show of new works by the Colombian artist Oscar Murillo, born in 1986 and living in London. Mr. Murillo was one of several emerging artists targeted by speculators in 2014. Zwirner’s “binary function” show, held in an elegant Georgian townhouse and with prices as high as $280,000 for new paintings, will confirm that he is now an established artist.
And then there is the loan show of Cy Twombly works from the Cy Twombly Foundation that inaugurates Gagosian’s 18,000-square-foot gallery at Grosvenor Hill in Mayfair, and the first London show of paintings by the Los Angeles artist Jonas Wood, born in 1977, held in Gagosian’s equally imposing space on Britannia Street, near King’s Cross.
With the auction prices of many once-fashionable young abstract painters now in decline, Mr. Wood has become the figurative painter of the moment. A monumental 2008 work, “Untitled (M.V. Landscape),” depicting houses at Martha’s Vineyard, is estimated to sell for £250,000 to £350,000 (or about $371,960 to $520,743) at Christie’s on Friday.
Can the market absorb so much material? Last year, 1,638 properties priced at more than $5 million were sold in London, more than any other city, according to a report published this month by the realtors Knight Frank.
There’s plenty of money in London that could be spent on art. There’s a lot less for the people who want to make it.
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