Ai Weiwei – Installation view of Divina Proportione (2010) at Lisson Gallery booth. All images: Photo ART iT.
Amid anxiety over Greece’s debt crisis and its potential repercussions for the eurozone, the 2011 edition of the Frieze Art Fair officially opened Oct 13 at London’s Regents Park.
At the private preview Oct 12, all indications were that buying power at the top end of the contemporary art market had yet to drop off. Local powerhouse Lisson Gallery sold an abstract sculpture by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, Divina Proportione (2010), for 280,000 euro – all the more impressive considering the work is an edition of three – and also placed Ryan Gander’s Self Portrait (2011) with a collector for 60,000 pounds.
However, perhaps anticipating recession concerns, many of the fair’s 170-plus participants had brought small works in the price range of 10,000 euro and under. A case in point, Berlin’s Micky Schubert sold three small-to-large-scale works by Marieta Chirulescu, priced between 4000 and 8000 euro, within minutes of the fair’s opening, receiving a boost from White Cube’s inclusion of the Romanian artist in the inaugural programming of its massive new venue in Bermondsey Road, unveiled Oct 11.
Left: Installation view of works by Marieta Chirulescu, both untitled and dated 2011, at Micky Schubert booth. Right: Installation view of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise booth with works by Martin Creed at far left and Joe Bradley in right foreground.
Major galleries such as Lisson and White Cube could count on steady sales for their internationally recognized artists; in contrast, galleries showing complete unknowns, or mid-career artists with prices in the neither-emerging-nor-blue-chip range, as well as galleries exhibiting in the Frame section of solo projects, seemed to be struggling for every piece of the action.
New York outfit Gavin Brown’s Enterprise took home the stand prize awarded by champagne makers Pommery, announced Oct 12 during the preview. From the munificence of The Outset/Frieze Art Fair Fund, the Tate Collection acquired Helena Almeida’s 38-part work on paper, Drawing (with pigment) (1995-99), from Galeria Helga de Alvear; Melanie Smith’s video made in collaboration with Rafael Ortega, Xilitla (2010), from Galerie Peter Kilchmann; and Alina Szapocznikow’s mixed-media photographic work, Tumour (1969), from Broadway 1602.
Participating from Japan in this year’s edition of Frieze were only three galleries: Taka Ishii, Tomio Koyama and, in the Frame section, Take Ninagawa, all from Tokyo.