LONDON. Art returns to center stage and once again becomes the live protagonist in London. “We’re back,” says Frieze Studios creative director Matthew McLean. After an entirely virtual edition last year due to the pandemic, the most anticipated and influential art fair of the moment restarts with a super edition and with mind-boggling numbers: until October 17, over 160 galleries from all over the world will they will concentrate in the English capital to exhibit the most significant contemporary talents.
Frieze London, in the heart of Regent’s Park, hosts the new and emerging, while on the other side of the park Frieze Masters brings art from the past millennium, pre-2000 to the stage. Artists, curators, gallery owners and collectors: no one is missing. From big names such as Gagosian and Sadie Coles HQ, pillars ready to welcome visitors at the entrance with their impressive stands, to the section dedicated to emerging artists, Focus, where newly born galleries highlight their best artists. And then the brand new Editions section starts, where the space is entrusted to publishing houses such as Paragon and Knust Kunz, which to bring novice collectors closer to exhibit prints by artists of the caliber of Paula Rego and Georg Baselitz.
There is an entire section dedicated to international artists who intend to change our vision of the world as we know it: Unwordling, literally «undoing the world», is curated by the very young Cedric Fauq, former curator of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Here emerges from the group the Croatian artist Nora Turato, born in 1991, who with her immense and colorful LED-lit canvases sends messages to visitors such as “Something big is going to happen”, something big is about to happen.
Inside Frieze, the pandemic seems a distant memory, everything is back to normal, masks on the face apart. Among the visitors, some hold the new issue of Frieze Week, the newspaper that accompanies the fair, under their arm. On the cover is a shot by Northern Irish photographer Gareth McConnell who portrays spring pink blossoms grown on the trees of Regent’s Park. A symbol of rebirth and hope that clearly defines the atmosphere of this eighteenth edition of Frieze.