The Frieze Art Fair in London@Art

Roberta Smith writes:

At this week’s Frieze Art Fair in London, they hoped for the best, expected the worst and took what came. After several weeks of financial havoc in stock exchanges across the globe, the feeding frenzy is over.

Photo: Daniel Deme/European Pressphoto Agency

Not Vital, "The Boyfriend 2008" Underneath it all was a sense that the art bubble had dodged a bullet, but only momentarily. And more profoundly, a sense that the market was so precarious that a shake-out, when it came, would be far-reaching and art would be only a small part of it.

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

Anish Kapoor, "Untitled 2008"

In other ways it was London Frieze Week as usual, with richly stocked booths, exhibitions, opening parties and other festivities.

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

The fair itself, with 152 participants, continues its quest to meet all conceivable art needs. Front and center of course are the art dealers and their booths, which presented an enormous range of product and anti-product, including an art performance or three.

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

Visitors to the fair could sit around “Sirkus,” by the collaborative Kling & Bank, a dark, noisy, utterly convincing rendition of an Icelandic bar that figured in the country’s active indie music scene.

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

At Francesca Kaufman visitors enter through a small door by the Dutch artist Lily van der Stokker that is scaled to her own height. Framed in a cartoonish wall drawing that proclaims “No reason, no goals,” it suggests a shrunken, or more selective art world.

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

One of the fair’s best-looking booths is Eva Presenhuber. Inside, two imposing perforated sculptures by the ever-inventive Ugo Rondinone are fashioned from a pebble-concrete aggregate and set on big wood-textured cast-concrete bases.

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

There are the usual gimmicky show-stoppers, like Petroq Sesti’s “Petrol Void,” a large glass sphere of clear oil in which a braid-like vortex twisted perpetually, seemingly down the drain.

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

There are paintings galore, from an beautiful new Picabia-esque abstraction by Albert Oehlen at Juana de Aizpuru to Merlin Carpenter’s latest put-downs at Reena Spaulings (cashmere Burberry throws, genuine and knockoff, on stretchers).

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

An artist known only as Norma Jean has made it possible for smokers to put themselves on display while having a cigarette in three clear plastic booths, each outfitted with a chair, a water cooler and an ashtray.

Photo: Steve Forrest for The New York Times

@Source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/17/arts/design/20081018_FRIEZE_SLIDESHOW_index.html