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The New York Times Style Magazine Qatar | Print

October 2015 Circulation: 11,250

54 T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine

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IN DOHA, where art is served by the country’s museum authority and is educative in approach, a commercial art fair like those organized in London and New York is a novel experience. Jo Stella-Sawicka, the artistic director of the Frieze Art Fair, tells about us about the growing popularity of such events that bring in Middle East galleries and artists from the region.

How have Frieze Fairs grown since their inception? What does the growth in popularity indicate?The very first Frieze Art Fair featured 124 galleries and this year that number is only about 30 percent higher. So alongside the contemporary fair, now called Frieze London, we have two more: Frieze Masters, which runs concurrently every October, a short walk away in The Regent’s Park, and is dedicated to historical art from 20th century masters to antiquity, and Frieze New York, which opens every May on its own island in Manhattan’s East River. In turn, we have also grown in terms of the size of audience — the very first Frieze attracted 27,000 visitors, whereas now it welcomes about twice that number. I am sure this is connected with a growing appetite for art in broader culture, and in particular the increasing visibility of art — and contemporary art in particular. We have also seen cross-collecting become increasingly common, as collectors of contemporary art look to the past to see what has influenced the art of the present. For instance, this year, we’ve asked the Blackstone Group’s Tom Hill to speak about his collection, which encompasses a range from Renaissance bronzes to Francis Bacon. We aim to promote discovery at all our fairs — visitors to Frieze Masters say they are often amazed at the accessibility and affordability of even expertly vetted historical and ancient art.

Art Matters

A Place of DiscoveryWhile museums have a greater

responsiblity, art festivals like the Frieze Art Fair aim to embrace a larger

following, moving away from the niche group of wealthy foundations and

private institutions. BY SINDHU NAIR

GROWING REACH: Top: images from Frieze Fairs 2014; Above right: Jo Stella-Sawicka feels there is an increasing visibility of art.

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55September - October 2015

Take us through the growth of Frieze as an art exhibition.The first Frieze took place in 2003 in a structure designed by David Adjaye, who Tony Salamé hired for the soon-to-open Aïshti Foundation in Beirut. The next year, Deutsche Bank joined as main sponsor, which — as both a global financial institution and a leading corporate art collector — sent a signal about our ambition and presence; we’re proud this partnership continues. Around this time, the London auction houses began to beefup their autumn sales to capitalize on the collectors drawn to the fair, and an annual week-long concentration of openings and major events around London began to crystallize around Frieze. Incorporating a steady influx of new galleries and growing global reach, we launched a special section for new talent, Frame, in 2009, which evolved into Focus,

which now gathers the leading emerging artists and young galleries of the world. In our tenth year, we launched Frieze Masters in October and Frieze New York in May. Last year, Frieze London was completely redesigned by the architects

UDS, leading to one of the best visitor experiences in years, as well as premiering Live, the first section dedicated to performance and participatory art. Despite all of our changes and growth, Frieze remains committed to putting artists at the center of everything we do, and every fair has featured Frieze Projects, a non-commercial series of special artists’ commissions.

What is the role of Middle Eastern galleries in the fair? How has the representation from the region grown? Galleries from the Middle East have been a steady and growing presence at the fair. Sfeir-Semler, whose founder is from Beirut and

whose space there is recognized as the first “white cube” in the Middle East, has been showing at Frieze for almost a decade now. From the wider region, long-standing exhibitors include Rampa and Rodeo from Istanbul, and Sommer Contemporary Art, which is based in Tel Aviv. More recently, Dubai’s The Third Line made a presentation of octogenarian Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian at Frieze New York earlier this year, and I am very excited that the gallery will be showing at Frieze London, alongside another Dubai gallery, Grey Noise, who will make their second Focus presentation with a curated display of three young Middle Eastern conceptual artists: Caline Aoun, Charbel-joseph H. Boutros, Stéphanie Saadé.

Outside of gallery participation, we’ve presented projects by the likes of Iranian-German Anahita Razmi, and Qatari-American Sophia Al Maria, who staged a sci-fi tour of the fair last year as part of our non-profit program, exploring her aesthetic concept of ‘Gulf Futurism’. The educational, publishing and curatorial enterprise Bidoun, dedicated to new thinking from the Middle East, participated in Frieze New York, raising funds by auctioning artworld ephemera — like artist Shirin Neshat’s kohl.

Having recently added Fiza Akram, based in Dubai, to Frieze’s team of 11 global VIP consultants, I’m keenly aware of the growth of collecting, curating and production of art throughout the region. We’re excited that Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi’s UAE-based Barjeel Foundation will be showing its collection of Arab art at

‘Outside of gallery participation, we’ve presented projects by the likes of Iranian-

German Anahita Razmi, and Qatari-American Sophia Al Maria, who staged a

sci-fi tour of the fair last year as part of our non-profit program,’ Stella-Sawicka says.

REGIONAL TOUCH From top: Nilbar Güres’s Snake: Queer Desire is Wild, 2015 from Gallery Rampa; Nevin Aladag’s Leaning Wall with 28 imprints of female and male body parts in various size cast in Meissen porcelain also from the Gallery Rampa; Zineb Sidera's Sugar Craters; and Güres’s Rose of Sapatão, all artists’ works represented by galleries from the Middle East.

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Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, concurrently with Frieze this year.

What role does innovation and education play at the fairs? We aim to make all visitors to the fairs, whether VIP collectors or general members of the public, have a meaningful encounter with art. We encourage innovative presentations by the galleries, and they respond accordingly. As a result, the fair is a place of discovery, not simply of commerce. Fortunately, as we take place in two of the world’s best art cities, we have a very sophisticated audience, who are already in the habit of visiting museums. We like to amplify the public’s experience through a number of initiatives we’re able to commit to with our partners — like Frieze Education, which Deutsche Bank supports in New York, and which connects the city’s school children directly in workshops with leading artists like Julie Mehretu and Urs Fischer. For those interested in learning about collecting, we have launched Frieze Bespoke, a new service that pairs users with an independent art specialist, who can help them identify their interests, locate work suitable for their budget, and make introductions to leading dealers and artists; the service is available at both fairs for as little as £350 (QR1,980).

How different will this year’s experience be? What are the highlights of the year?Both Frieze London and Frieze Masters open at the same time this year: we are embracing the fact that the two fairs together are a joint experience, and we are encouraging everyone to visit both. Frieze Masters boasts a new feature section this year, Collections, curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal and dedicated to highly desirable

collections of historical art and objects — from mother of pearl Micronesian fishing hooks and colored Roman marbles, to rare portraits by photographer David Bailey.

Does Frieze manage to shock or stimulate the art community? What influence do art exhibitions have on museum spaces?With 160 galleries from all over the globe, one day at Frieze London, say, lets you see the very newest, previously unseen work from emerging artists, alongside iconic pieces by some of the most recognizable contemporary names. Similarly, Frieze Masters presents a carefully selected, expertly vetted insight into several thousand years, spanning world cultures from exquisite Islamic objects at Amir Mohtashemi to Inuit masks once owned

by Parisian surrealists at Donald Ellis. So there’s both more range than any single exhibition could encompass, and a tighter, more manageable selection than trawling a whole museum. Of course, being a place to acquire and not just view art means the fairs have a distinct role, but we see this as being symbiotic with the activity of museums and public institutions. For example, it was at Frieze in 2005 that Tate Modern acquired the first ever performance work in its permanent collection. At the same time, at this year’s Frieze New York, Dubai’s The Third Line gallery presented a solo stand of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, to coincide

with her concurrent retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. So you could say influence flows both ways; we’re part of the same ecology. That said, with three Michelin starred restaurants hosting pop-ups at the fairs in London this year, I like to think no museum can boast food as good as Frieze’s.

Frieze London will take place from 14-17 October in the Regent’s Park, London

‘Being a place to acquire and not just view art means the fairs have a distinct role, but

we see this as being symbiotic with the activity of museums and public

institutions,’ she says.

DISTORTED VIEW Clockwise from top left: Middle East artists displaying at Frieze: Caline Aoun’s “Blue

Paper Plane”; Babak Golkar’s “Backyard Wars Before”, diptych c-prints on metallic paper mounted on aluminum; Guy Zagursky’s “Nostos”; Stephanie

Saade’s “Graceful Degradation” in welded iron, stainless steel and brass; Thomas Zipp’s work in

acrylic oil, lacquer and aluminium on canvas.

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