Frieze 2016: to sell, to amaze, to Instagram.

Another year another Frieze week. I was not planning to write anything on the topic this year but after the 10th person asked me if I am covering the event I thought f*** it’ - it's that time of the year to be self-reflective about art in London anyway. So here is my 2 cents worth.

This year I traded in the press pass for the oyster blue VIP card that I kept mixing up with the Oyster card. No, the Frieze card does not work on the tube, but apart from that, it tends to get you into almost all places. This said for me like for many people Frieze week did not begin at the Wednesday preview, or even with the Tuesday VIP programme it began in early September. 

To sell or to amaze.

Frieze week starts when galleries around London start opening the shows that will be on during Frieze. What a gallery puts on usually is a good indicator of how they want to be presented at Frieze.

Usually what galleries show during Frieze falls into one of two categories: things that sell, and things that get attention. The former brings you cash, the later brings you press interest and puts you on the collector's map. Usually, (not always) galleries in their first year at the fair try to make a statement. Think Arcadia Missa or Sunday Painter in 2015 when you couldn't really open an art publication without seeing their names.

So what about the works that bring you cash? Think mass appealing stuff - neon,big names, abstract or figurative or tongue in cheek painting, and small (elevator size) sculpture. Work that is tangible, easy to buy, transport, and hang over your sofa. Don’t get me wrong these are good, often great works. I would probably chew off my arm to have a painting by Alisson Katz to hang over my sofa.

So what did we see at this year's Frieze?

I think everyone I asked what they thought about Frieze used a variation of these terms: ‘polite’, ‘pretty’, ‘good’, ‘it's frieze’ etc This is the first year that I can remember where all stands were polite booths to sell. No one went full out extravaganza, possibly the most experimental work I saw was the brutalist cement table and chair thing. No ‘take off your shoes and hand in your phone’ installations, no bizarre asylums at Frieze Masters.

So what's up with sellable work?

According to all reports, sales were strong at both Frieze and Frieze Masters. This year with the pound being equal to the Euro it seems many galleries have anticipated that the overseas collectors would see the event as a mid-season sale where everything is 25% off. And everyone seemed to have prepared their galleries and stands accordingly - as polite sellable shop fronts. For the most part, there is nothing wrong with showing and selling sellable work. Especially when the collectors seem to be in a ‘buy all bargains’ mentality. That said a few galleries like Pace looked like something that belongs at the London Art Fair, not Frieze, by showcasing idiotic Instagrammable work.

The rise of ‘Instagrammable AIt seems that alongside the two established groups: things that sell and things that get attention. A third category arose to power ‘things that photograph well’. This year this category was dominated by the pink extravaganza table, the Hauser and Wirth booth aka ‘what a blue chip gallery thinks an artist studio looks like’, and of course the wooden stag covered in glass bubbles monstrosity that Pace dragged along (the fact that it was sold to a KPop celebrity does not justify it).

When did art become cool?

Alongside Instagrammable art becoming a thing, this year ‘cool kids’ seem to be taking Frieze by storm.

I remember just some three Friezes ago, spending a warm evening in the half full garden at some DRAF VIP prosecco-fueled event. This was pre my VIP access days so that meant that general public mortals like me were allowed to enter. Fast forward to 2016, there is a VIP queue to get into DRAF and if you are ‘general public’ your queue is 30 meters long. In fact, I am pretty sure it’s easier to get into Berghain than into DRAF for a Frieze week evening event.

Don’t get me wrong DRAF is still its amazing fantastic self. However, it's the crowd that it and Frieze gather that started to change. It's no longer just nerdy art geeks and collectors.

With each year I see more and more ‘cool kids’. ‘Cool kids’ are the kids you find outside fashion shows, the kids that spend the whole day dressing up to look like ‘devil may care’. The same kids that go to music gigs, film gigs, and now apparently art gigs too. It seems that 2016 is the year when I realised that art is cool?

A few months ago someone said that today the art world is where the fashion world was 10-16 years ago. Looking at the growing amount of articles with names such as: ‘what people wore at Frieze’ and ‘what celebrities to see at Frieze’ and ‘Top 10 art things to buy this fall’ I am not surprised.

Is art cool?

The only events lamer than art collector events are museum curator events. The art world is cool not because of what you wear or listen to but of knowing some lame obscure fact like a wombats poop is square. Or that one of Pollock's paintings in Guggenheim Venice has a little drop of paint protruding from a painting, and that little drop is a conservator's nightmare.

Do I think that art becoming cool is good or bad? Honestly, I don't think I have an opinion on this. On one side the more attention the art world gets - the more money is brought in - the better it is. On the other side, more cool kids means a bigger market for Instagrammable art means my Instagram feed is clogged up by monstrosities such as a wooden stag covered in glass balls (srsly how could you Pace?)    

What does the future hold?

Well, FIAC is opening in Paris later this month, but who goes there anyways? Then, of course, there will be Basel Miami, and I will be getting major FOMO because while my salary comes in pounds and the pound is in the gutter I am marooned on this xenophobic island. That said by the time Miami rolls over Trump might be president of USA and that would probably signal the end of the party. And of course, in January there is the art fair that I shall not name that as always I will ignore because one wooden stag was enough for me.

But in all seriousness, I have no idea what will happen by the time Frieze 2017 rolls over, I just hope there will be enough newcomers to show some exciting stuff.