By mid-October, autumn has settled over London, tinting the lawns and trees along the roads faintly gold. Pedestrians in trench coats of every color, hurrying along, seem to be heading in one direction: Regent’s Park. From October 9 to 15, Frieze London and Frieze Masters are in full swing. Twenty years earlier, in the same season and at the same location, Frieze was born as one of the world’s three best-known art fairs.
At twenty, Frieze has more than 160 galleries in its main section and more than 130 galleries in Masters, bringing together treasures spanning 6,000 years of art history. This year it has also added several new sections designed to seize the eye: Artist-to-Artist, Studio, and Modern Women. The sculpture exhibition on the lawns of Regent’s Park has reached an unprecedented scale. Frieze Sculpture, 2023. Across London, museums and arts institutions have mounted special exhibitions and events during the art week: Tate Modern is presenting a major retrospective of PHILIP GUSTON; at the Royal Academy of Arts, Abramović, the first living woman artist to receive a solo exhibition there in its 255-year history, is showing one of the most important large-scale live works of her career.
As the only Chinese media organization present, we came to Britain before the fair to interview EVA LANGRET, director of Frieze, and NATHAN CLEMENTS-GILLESPIE, director of Frieze Masters, about this artistic event and Frieze’s twenty years. Frieze London, 2023. “This is the most international edition we have had to date.”
Eva told us. More than 160 galleries are participating in the main fair, from 40 countries and regions. The new Artist-to-Artist section is among the year’s most anticipated projects. Frieze invited 8 artists who have helped shape the contemporary art world, each of whom nominated a younger artist. Through their sharp eyes, these artists are bringing “powerful new voices” to the attention of the global art world.
Frieze London, 2023. The 8 senior artists are last year’s Venice Biennale Golden Lion winner Simone Leigh; Olafur Eliasson, known for “making weather”; Alvaro Barrington, a Black artist raised in the Caribbean; Tracey Emin CBE RA, a leading figure among radical and avant-garde women artists; Anthea Hamilton, winner of the Turner Prize in 2016 and a favorite of the fashion world; Wolfgang Tillmans, who has helped redefine photography’s place in contemporary art; Rirkrit Tiravanija, known for interactive spatial installations; and the Korean artist Haegue Yang, who works with memory and sound waves.
Artist Tracey Emin (left) and artist Vanessa Raw (right) at Frieze. Their nominees were Deborah Anzinger, Fabian Knecht, Simonette Quamina, Vanessa Raw, Carlos Villa, Marc Barker, Wantanee Siripattananuntakul, and Ayoung Kim.
Deborah Anzinger’s booth at Frieze. Several of the nominated artists stand out both for the force of their work and for their unusual biographies. Take Deborah Anzinger. Her black-and-white paintings are full of metaphor and questioning. A self-taught painter, she originally studied carnivorous plants and completed a doctorate in HIV neuropathogenesis. Simonette Quamina’s booth at Frieze. Fabian Knecht’s booth at Frieze. Knecht’s work is a densely woven net made from old clothes torn into thin strips.
At first, these “nets” were used as camouflage in the war between Russia and Ukraine, making targets difficult for the Russian military to identify. The clothing’s holes and tears reflect the brutality of war, as well as the artist’s sympathy for civilians and his antiwar sentiment. Ayoung Kim’s booth at Frieze. Carlos Villa’s booth at Frieze. We also saw three paintings by the Filipino American modernist Carlos Villa, made between 1980 and 1982; this year marks the tenth anniversary of his death.
In these works, Villa used his face, hands, and body to imprint marks on the canvas. The traces left by his rolling body are so forceful that they cannot be ignored. Using his own physical form as a medium, he compelled the public to recognize his presence and identity as a Filipino artist. The new Studio section takes an equally original approach, bringing artists’ studio environments—not only their finished works—into the fair. It offers visitors a view of where artists work and live, while revealing the relationship between the studio as a changing space and the artist’s practice.
Artist Mona Hatoum in the Studio section. Five artists took part: Maggi Hambling, Mona Hatoum, Lucia Laguna, Arlene Shechet, and Hyun-Sook Song.
We also met Mona Hatoum herself. Wearing black-framed glasses, with silver-and-white curls, she patiently explained her ideas to every visitor who asked. The presentation included signature works organized around themes including “Caged,” “Bed,” and “Shoes and Net,” tracing the arc of her practice. Hyun-Sook Song at Frieze. “The objects displayed in these studios are both sources of inspiration and records of the artists’ creative processes.”
Nathan, the director of Frieze Masters, described the Studio section this way. In the “Space” of the Korean artist Hyun-Sook Song, an old glass cabinet holds fabric, photocopied archival documents, postcards, book pages, and a handwritten note. The arrangement evokes the artist’s childhood in a Korean village. Nathan told us that notes are often pinned to the walls of Song’s studio: “On the day I paint, I revisit my childhood: on the day of painting, please don’t speak; remain as silent as possible!”
Her studio is a place of thought, invention, and endurance. The objects we saw are closely integrated with her artistic ideas, preserving memories of childhood, homeland, and poverty, as well as a return to local traditions. Frieze London, Modern Women section, 2023. Another new section, Modern Women, reflects a broader trend of recent years: the gradual rediscovery, within art history, of great women artists who were once overlooked.
The section focuses on the work of 10 women artists, particularly their practices between 1880 and 1980. When we asked why this period was emphasized, Nathan told us, “Because during this period, the rapid development of feminist theory and active feminist movements brought landmark changes in women’s rights. The exhibition places rare emphasis on how each woman artist responded to her cultural and social context.”
Frieze London, Modern Women section, 2023. The African American artist Faith Ringgold, for example, uses quilt-making to tell stories of her experience as a Black woman.
“Her work examines the complexity of gender and racial identity in the United States, reflecting the artist’s firm commitment to social justice,” Nathan said. Frieze London, Modern Women section, 2023. Another Korean artist, Kang Jung-Ho, was one of the country’s most pioneering women artists. Through her paintings, she forcefully criticized and challenged the restrictions placed on women by Korean society in the 1960s and ’70s, along with its rigid patriarchal system and traditions.
Masterworks of the twentieth century at Frieze Masters. Sam Fogg and Daniel Crouch Rare Books at Frieze, 2023. Opening alongside this year’s main Frieze fair, Masters brings together more than 130 galleries and works spanning 6,000 years. Here one can trace the arc of art history through rare antiquities—including books, manuscripts, colored ornaments, and a fourteenth-century French ivory casket—alongside Old Master paintings and twentieth-century masterpieces.
Ceramics, an ancient ivory box, and sculpture at Frieze Masters, 2023. Particularly remarkable was the number of works normally seen only in museums: ancient Roman marble sculptures dating to before the Common Era, Buddhist statues from India, and devotional sculptures from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
“It is still difficult for us to estimate the total number of works on view, because each gallery may choose a different format—perhaps a solo presentation, a themed exhibition, or a curated display,” Nathan told us. Frans Hals at Frieze Masters. We also saw works by Frans Hals, exhibited in Europe for the first time in 120 years, and an important late-career portrait by Lucian Freud—a type of work that had never before appeared on the market.
Frieze Masters: Hauser & Wirth’s booth. A sculpture by PHILIP GUSTON and LOUISE BOURGEOIS, “Double Knife,” was juxtaposed at Hauser & Wirth’s booth. There were also early works by El Anatsui, offering a view of several decades of his practice beyond the large-scale bottle-cap installations for which he is best known.
We also noticed many small, long-established European galleries: modest in scale, passed down through generations, with highly refined tastes and a tightly limited roster of artists. At the fair, fathers, mothers, and children sat in their booths, introducing passersby to works from the family galleries. There was a particular warmth to the scene. Frieze Sculpture, 2023. After leaving Masters, we crossed the sculpture exhibition at the center of Regent’s Park on our way to Frieze Masters.
The sculpture exhibition on the lawn is another annual Frieze tradition. Free to the public, it occupies the southern end of the broad promenade in Regent’s Park’s English Garden, linking Frieze London and Frieze Masters. Visitors can walk from one fair to the other while taking in sculptures in a range of styles. Frieze Sculpture, 2023. The sculpture park is also one of Londoners’ favorite ephemeral art events. This year it presented 20 large-scale sculptures, almost all new works from 2023.
The artist Jyll Bradley’s large interactive performance sculpture “Hop Garden” makes performance art part of the sculpture park. From October 11 to 15, a performance lasting approximately 15 minutes took place each afternoon at 4 p.m. One of the exhibition’s most striking sculptures was a 5-meter-high stone column by Ayşe Erkmen, covered in moss.
Frieze Sculpture, 2023. As we walked, we suddenly came upon a half-naked man. The sculptor Tony Matelli has rendered the skin, expression, and posture of a sleepwalking man with an almost uncanny realism. Frieze Sculpture, 2023. Five works by the Chinese artist Lili Ren were scattered across the lawn. Based on aquatic organisms yet growing out of grass, they created a strange sense of conflict.
What particularly surprised us was the care Frieze has devoted to documenting the sculptures. It made a one-minute film of each work, provided a separate audio guide, and added curator commentary and artist-interview videos to selected pieces—all available on Frieze’s official website. This goes well beyond the boundaries of a commercial fair. It also relates to Frieze’s original model: an art magazine. Frieze founders Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover. In 1991, the childhood friends Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover founded the publication in their garage.
They had graduated from Oxford University only 2 years earlier and had never studied art. Their motivation was simple: London’s Y.B.A. (Young British Artists) movement was flourishing, yet they could not find a magazine that genuinely explained “What is contemporary art?” The existing publications offered either exceptionally dull academic writing or clichés and outdated views. Slotover thought: Why not start a magazine myself?
Cover of the inaugural issue of Frieze magazine, Damien Hirst and “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” 1991. Damien Hirst, “For the Love of God,” 2011. The cover of the inaugural issue showed a butterfly, an image that can now be called an art-world phenomenon. It was the work of Damien Hirst, one of the most important contemporary artists in the world and one of the central members of the Y.B.A. movement.
“Although there was no formal relationship between the Y.B.A. artists and Frieze magazine, it can be said that the magazine was founded in the especially exciting British art world of the 1990s, when international attention to British artists was growing,” Eva, the director of Frieze, told us. Recent popular Frieze magazine covers, from top to bottom: Henry Taylor, Isaac Julien, and Nicole Eisenman. Over the years, the magazine has produced many memorable covers, becoming an artistic trend and cultural phenomenon.
“The most popular recent covers feature new work by Henry Taylor, Isaac Julien, and Nicole Eisenman.
Eva said. The transition from magazine publishing to organizing an art fair was equally natural. In 2000, Tate Modern opened; international galleries including Gagosian and White Cube established themselves in London, and the number of international galleries had grown to approximately 10 times what it was 10 years earlier, when the magazine was founded. As contemporary art was exploding, Britain’s art market contained a major commercial gap. Although London’s contemporary art scene was developing rapidly and was home to many prominent artists, there was no art fair.
Eva said. Posters outside Frieze London and visitors near the park, 2023. Frieze London emerged in 2003. Looking back over the past 20 years, Eva considers internationalization the most significant change in the contemporary art world.
“This year’s fair includes galleries from Iran, Iceland, Guatemala, and Peru. Before, that was something we could not have imagined.” Frieze London, 2023. The fair also attracts many celebrities: Hollywood actor Gwyneth Paltrow, supermodel Kate Moss, Larry Gagosian, and artists of every kind. Eva also told us how thrilled she was to see Dries Van Noten, the fashion designer she had admired for years, at Frieze.
Frieze London, 2023. The international character Eva describes is also evident in the strong rise of the Asian market in recent years. Chinese galleries, in particular, have grown from none 20 years ago to 4 this year, while 11 international megagalleries now have branches in China. Frieze has witnessed the beginnings and development of contemporary art in China. This year’s participating Chinese galleries are Magician Space, Don Gallery, and Gallery Vacancy from mainland China, and Blindspot Gallery from Hong Kong.
Magician Space’s booth at Frieze London, 2023. Magician Space, Don Gallery, and Hong Kong’s Blindspot Gallery have all participated before. Magician Space brought works by Chinese artists including Qin Yifeng, Tang Yongxiang, and Li Liren, signaling clear confidence in the British market. Blindspot Gallery’s booth at Frieze London, 2023. This is Blindspot’s fourth Frieze. It brought the artist Shanyu’s latest video work, “Story Loop”; Xu Shiqi’s latest embroidery work, “Be Quiet, Baby”; and works shown at the Venice Biennale.
It also presented paper-cut works by the artist Xiadie. Mimi Chun, the gallery’s founder, told us that inquiries about the works had already begun arriving steadily before the fair opened, from institutions, museums, and private collectors. Over the past 4 years, she has also noticed that more Chinese collectors are attending the fair and that they are becoming younger. Frieze London, 2023. “At Frieze, you can always find a considerable number of pioneering and avant-garde works, and the quality of the participating galleries is extremely high.
“London’s art ecology is vibrant and comprehensive. Its art schools train many young artists working in different forms every year, much as they do in China. But London has nonprofit art spaces of different types and scales, as well as cooperative and semi-cooperative arts organizations, which offer artists—especially young artists—support, studio residencies, commissions, and exhibition opportunities. That is the greatest difference between London and China’s art ecosystems at present,” Mimi Chun said.
Frieze London, 2023. Eva, Frieze’s director, also spoke about the past 20 years, saying that interest in Chinese contemporary art in the European market has grown explosively. “We can see it directly in sales and in the feedback we receive from the market.
“She said. The changes among Chinese collectors at the fair have also been striking: the older generation is more cautious, while the younger generation is more willing to break with convention.
“China actually has a highly mature collecting culture and occupies a considerable share of the global art market. Older Chinese collectors are deeply knowledgeable, thanks in large part to their extensive international travel. In recent years, the younger generation has become more active. Compared with some of the classic tastes of their parents’ generation, they are more inclined to focus on contemporary works—they place great importance on buying the work of their own generation,” Eva said. Photography: Xie Yunni. Some images courtesy of Frieze.