FEATURE REVIEWS

“Frieze” is not just a brand, it was an ecosystem. When two fresh graduates of Oxford founded Frieze magazine in 1991, they did not know that they were to achieve the following: merging art professionals and amateur enthusiasts into one readership (or even one authorship), bringing together London’s different art sectors, and helping make the city an international art hub — during the rise of the Frieze brand, London saw its number of international galleries grow tenfold.

After Brexit, Paris and Milan with tariff advantages and influential foundations/private collectors have become the new up-and-comers in the art fair circuit. It remains to be seen, what dynamics Frieze, now an “old” and established brand, will create in the new setting. The CEO of LA-based Endeavor Group, main shareholder of the Frieze brand since 2016, once compared Frieze LA with Basel Miami. Is LA “the artists’ city” like New York, or like Miami, a beach resort for billionaire collectors? Or it is rather akin to London before the 1990s, with a strong film and music industry yet to be blended with the art sector?

How should Frieze LA assign its focus and energy?  According to ArtTactics’ statistics, the high-end sector of the global art market saw a 30% decline in 2023, while artworks priced at $50,000 or lower saw an 18% increase in sales volume. 2024 seems to be a good time to cultivate younger stars and new collectors: the fresh galleries that will join Frieze LA this year, especially a few vibrant New York galleries (Kasmin, Petzel, Rachel Uffner Gallery to make their debut), are very good at that.  

Essa J. Lou, free-lance critic and consultant to art collectors

Frieze Los Angeles 2024 by Frieze Los Angeles

This year’s Armory Show was a bit subdued because Frieze was taking place in South Korea at the same time. But I still picked up some pearls. New works of older artists such as Magali Lara ( Larkin Erdmann, BOOTH 318) and Mario Schifano (Repetto Gallery BOOTH 309) are so refreshing, probably thanks to the fact they stayed more or less aloof from the market.

But two younger artists I think are worth special mention, as they hit, in very different ways, on the Zeitgest ( “the spirit of our time”). Nicholas Bierk’s very small paintings (Overduin & Co. BOOTH 233) stun with the darkness of Walter Sickert and the texture of 17th century masters. Emanating void and living abandonment, Bierk’s everyday images captured the existential state of many in our time: meaningless and completely lonely, so lonely, in fact, that his flower might as well be blooming in an underground cell.

To the exact opposite, Charline von Heyl’s solo exhibition (Petzel) parallel to the Armory season is exuberant with energy. Image after image never repeats itself in subject matter or style. But behind them is also a void — albeit a positive kind that I call “post-subject creativity”.

Deleuze’s wish is fulfilled now by an artist. We have paintings painted by one and the same person, but because she has emptied her subjectivity to open up to stimulus from everything inside-or-out, she is, in the process of creation, actually anyone or every one. How liberating. The Bierk painting I liked was sold. Von Heyl’s paintings come with a waiting list, with museums at the top.

Essa J. Lou, free-lance critic and consultant to art collectors