Frieze, 2016

I AND ME Loves_ Frieze 2016

Regents Park is still sobbing from the annual influx of the Worldwide art community for Frieze Art Fair. We walked through the park yesterday and it’s still a building site, no doubt countless up-and-coming artists inboxes are now awash with URGENT messages as a result.

Make no mistake, Frieze is really fun, however, it’s also totally mental and ALSO ridiculously huge. We didn’t even make it over to Frieze Masters (a 13-minute walk or deluxe BMW bus shuttle away). Gone is any sense of exclusivity as the fair grows in size and stature year-on-year, making it easier to get lost, lose your friends, struggle to locate what you’re looking for, get in the way of people taking pictures on their iPhones, never find what you’re looking for, be completely unsure of what you’ve seen, or where you’re going. Having said that, we didn’t pick up a map at the entrance…

Still, in-and-amongst it all we fell for Chen Wei’s luscious rave scapes, Matt Mullican’s brash iconography, Sam Falls’ beautiful monochrome photos, Gary Hume’s layered charcoal-and-paint flower studies, and, as always, it’s always nice to soak up a James Turrell in the flesh (imagine having one of his works in your house.)