With so many different galleries from all over the world vying for visitors (particularly those of the well-heeled variety), going around Frieze can be somewhat numbing – and that’s putting it mildly. What are the winning strategies that make a few galleries stand out from the crowd? Here are five ways to lure in artlovers, collectors and idlers:
1. Position is key
It is no exaggeration to say that where a gallery is situated inside the vast Frieze tent can make or break it. The more prominent galleries, more often than not from New York or London, line one of the principal arteries of the fair, close to the main entrance through which everyone is channelled in. Smaller, lesser-known galleries often languish somewhere on the periphery, in cubicles half the size of those allotted to their more illustrious counterparts. Being placed next to the toilets at last year’s fair, I was told by the attendant of an Italian gallery, did his sales more harm than the economic downturn.
2. The element of shock
Given the ambient sensory overload, some galleries resort to shock tactics. Perrotin gallery mounts a full-blown assault on the senses by choosing Daniel Firman’s multi-coloured neon Butterfly, inspired by the Apple login-in sign, as its centrepiece. An abrupt change of scale, forcing you to peer at a work from close up or else to distance yourself from it, can equally be arresting. On a different note, pornography is more prominent than ever at this year’s fair. Desperate measures for desperate times?
3. The recognition factor
Galleries from far and wide pull out all their big names for the occasion. What struck me was the number of British artists or artists recently featured in major London exhibitions on show. Michael Werner and David Zwirner, two New York-based galleries facing each other from across the aisle, had between them enough works by artists made familiar through solo exhibitions at Tate Modern and Tate Britain, the Whitechapel Gallery and the White Cube, to fill out a choice contemporary art museum. But even smaller galleries are eager to flaunt their work relations with the usual suspects of the British arts scene.
4. Humour pays off
Contemporary art isn’t famous for its sense of humour. This may be why two Frieze Talks – “What’s So Funny?” and “Susan Hiller in conversation with John Welchman” – choose to tackle this issue head-on. A more subtle alternative to shock, humour can be just as arresting. Witness gallery Jack Hanley’s adroit use of astonishingly lifelike, cast-resin effigies of gherkins erected on pedestals in Austrian artist Erwin Wurm’s Self-Portrait as a Pickle.
5. Less is more
This principle goes a long way to explaining the success of “Frame“, a section of the fair dedicated to solo artist presentations by galleries that have been around for less than 6 years. Some of the displays that worked best at Frieze as a whole were the ones which focused on a single artist or fully worked out one dominant concept. Soothing grey tones in the richly patterned paintings by Japanese artist Nana Funo, represented by Tomio Koyama Gallery based in Tokyo and Kyoto, were a positive reprieve after some of the fair’s excesses.
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