Frieze Art Fair 2015
Last week the leading names of the contemporary art world converged upon Regent’s Park in London for the annual Frieze Art Fair.
I was attending as a guest of BMW who were presenting their new 7 series in the BMW visitor lounge.
The luxury model, which launches later this month, features elegant, precise lines and technical innovations including remote control parking and gesture control that enables you to perform tasks such as answering or rejecting calls or adjusting the audio with a simple hand movement.
It’s really a very technical car but one that seeks to combine function with emotion – no attention to detail has been spared in ensuring that the touch and feel of the vehicle is satisfyingly luxurious. Tactile materials like leather and wood have been used throughout the car’s spacious interior, and massage seats, ambient lighting, a Bowers & Wilkins audio system and a choice of eight different fragrances collectively deliver a multi-sensory experience designed to ensure a sense of comfort and well-being.
Frieze is an event at which the opportunity for people watching offers almost as much visual inspiration as the art itself. It’s fascinating to observe the different sartorial tribes, from the buyers and collectors, to the gallery assistants and PRs and the artists and other assorted creative types, so it was fitting that Tom Friedman’s sculpture Cocktail Party drew one of the biggest crowds of the day. His colourful, exuberant and wittily observed lifesize gathering of figures perfectly echoed the mood of Frieze VIP preview day.
While this is a sculpture that very obviously belongs in a gallery or public space, there were many pieces that I would have loved to take home with me. Art is what gives our homes soul, layers and sometimes even meaning. Along with love, warmth, family and pets it can be what turns a functional space designed for living, sleeping, eating and bathing into a home.
In putting together the following edit, which is by no means an attempt to exhaustively summarise the best of Frieze 2015, I’ve tried to focus on colours, forms, textures and materials, in the hope that it might inspire you to think about how some of these ideas might feed into interiors trends and influence how we decorate our homes.
COLOUR
Bridget Smith – Blueprint for a Curtain (2015), cyanotype print.
Ignasi Abbali’s Diez Páginas blancas (Ten White Pages) at Galeria elba Benitez is a sculpture composed of blank pages taken from disused books and displayed in a freestanding vitrine. The pages which were once uniformly white, have become unevenly coloured with age, presenting a delicate array of chromatic tonalities.
I loved the slightly retro, cinematic colours of this work by João Modé.
The perfect shade of plaster pink.
TEXTURE
Donald Moffett – Oil on Linen, wood panel support with steel tubing (2015) at Marianne Boesky Gallery.
Ha Chong-Hyun – Conjunction (2009), Oil on hemp cloth at Kukje Gallery / Tina Kim Gallery.
Aaron Young – . (2014), blowtorch and pigment on canvas at Kukje Gallery / Tina Kim Gallery
MATERIALS
Concrete was much in evidence at Frieze this year. This sculpture by Lais Myrrha (above) was one of my favourite pieces.
Christoph Weber – Beton (2015), concrete.
Delicate geometric threaded sculpture by Tomás Saraceno – BD+14 (2015) polyester rope, fishing line, steel thread.
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige – Geometry of Space (2014), stretched oxidized steel.
A Frieze visitor gazes at a hemispherical sculpture by Anish Kapoor at Lisson Gallery.
Grace Schwindt – A Tiffany vase (2015), porcelain, wood, resin and pigments.
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I have tried to credit the artist and gallery wherever possible but I omitted to note the details for a few of the pieces pictured here. If you know who they should be credited to please do let me know and I will happily add the details.
With thanks to BMW.
All images © Design Hunter.
