I visited this year’s edition of Frieze in New York on a Thursday, which is an odd day to visit an art fair. For the uninitiated, I’ll explain: major art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel usually (but not always) hold their first opening – known as “first-choice VIPs”, in the sad lingo of the art world – Wednesday morning. These are followed by a Wednesday evening openness, aimed at people who are also very important, but clearly not so important. “Ordinary” people, those who have no connection to the industry and who really love art (bless them), or who want a good TikTok backdrop and a nice air-conditioned space to let their children lose themselves, tend to visit the show on Friday or weekend. Sandwiched between these two categories like a forgotten pickle is Thursday, the day of art fair limbo.
This morning I arrived at The Shed, the gigantic multi-disciplinary Hudson Yards arts center that has been home to Frieze since 2020, with bright eyes, an open mind, and a serious question in my heart: who is here today? The answer, I’ve learned, is a weird mix of mid-level art advisors, artists and/or their parents, wealthy people who think the first-choice opening is cheesy, and Chris Rock, who apparently waltzed around 11:30am wearing dark shades (although I didn’t catch it myself).
My journey began at the booth of seasoned art dealer Miguel Abreu, lined with paintings by incredibly underrated artist Scott Lyall. These aren’t the kinds of works you might expect to find at an art fair, as they’re virtually impossible to capture with a phone camera. Composed of gold nanoparticles and an acrylic gel on a glass mirror, Lyall’s shimmering surfaces reflect light in a magical, golden way that can only be appreciated in person.
Abreu gave me a factual take on the day one versus day two hierarchy. “VIP is the new plebs,” he said. “People who really start looking at work on its own terms come later in the week. VIPs have a built-in filter, they already know what they like and what they want. I like people who don’t know, because they are the ones who discover things.
“We often do much later, when people are relieved of the demands of what they’re supposed to like and watch,” he added.
Encouraged by Abreu’s candor, I walked through the fair with a bouncing sense of possibility and genuine curiosity that indeed led me to a job I loved. New York-based Casey Kaplan Gallery presented Matthew Ronay’s ‘The Crack, the Swell, an Ode’ (2022), a 24-foot sculpture on a horizontal plinth featuring the artist’s distinctive biomorphic forms in shades of purple, of red and magenta. The abstract yet evocative shapes evoked in my mind a frenzy of visual references shooting like electric sparks: Luis Barragán, ovaries, cacti, lobsters. James Cohan, another local dealer, also opted for a solo presentation, focusing the stand on Naudline Pierre’s tantalizing paintings. The centerpiece, a massive canvas titled “The Only Way Out Is In” (2023), depicts a group of devilish figures and fiery whirlwinds against a Kandinsky yellow background. And a painting by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy titled “Financial” (2019) on the Mendes Wood stand, depicting a pink figure apparently fornicating with a lion, broke with the seriousness of the rest of the fair.
But my sanguine attitude faded predictably quickly. With few exceptions, Frieze was a monotonous display of artwork so dull and forgettable that I barely remember what, exactly, was so terrible about it. Hungry with excitement, I asked an employee of the Glasgow gallery, the Modern Institute, if I could take a short video of the works of art mysteriously concealed by a heavy black curtain in a small project room adjacent to their stand.
“No,” replied the attendant, smiling.
“It’s just not something we would show,” they added cryptically, and I felt more than ever on day two.
Nearby stood a tall man with an expensive-looking camera. His name was Justin Lane and he was a photographer for the European Photo Press Agency, hired to photograph the show. “It’s an interesting scene,” he told me when I asked him what the fair looked like through his literal lens. “There are a lot of people who clearly show up in a certain way, which I like to see,” he said. “It’s the money, it’s the art world, the galleries, I find that fascinating.” Lane, who describes himself as “not from the art world”, was very sensitive to the social dynamics of this rarefied environment, and I had a momentary out-of-body experience in which I saw the theatrics strange of all this from the outside.
After wandering the booths for a few hours, I finally gave up and made my way to the eighth floor, which has a small cafe and a number of luxury goods stalls selling things like anti-aging serums and cream. tequila. What caught my eye, however, was an Illy cafe pop-up lined with a swirling design that I immediately recognized as the work of artist Judy Chicago – whose name was printed next to it. of a selection of sugars and coffee stirrers. The little shop also featured a framed artwork and, to my horror, small porcelain coffee cups mounted on the wall also printed with the artist’s design. The artist is best known for “dinner” (1974-1979), an installation once presented as a major feminist work that has since been the subject of criticality and reassessment. How the mighty fellI thought, thinking about the mediocrity of the coffee mugs and that of Chicago. recent smoke works.
After voraciously inhaling a $17 turkey sandwich, I sadly descended. But before I left for the day, I felt compelled to approach an older man who was standing near the second-floor entrance with a sincere, happy smile. He said he was a retired lawyer, and when I asked him his thoughts on Frieze, he eagerly asked me what he said was his favorite piece of work at the fair, at the nearby Chapter stand. Gallery.
“It’s a sculpture with a scooter embedded in some sort of fanning-book,” he told me, pointing to a floor piece by Ann Greene Kelly that I couldn’t have described better myself. -even. I asked him what drew him to the room.
“Well, I like the shape, I like the color, I like the shades of gray…and I know the artist,” he said. “She is my daughter.” It was a wholesome and comforting moment in a space that is rarely one of those things.
