Frieze New York in Images

In its third year, Frieze New York is still housed in a very large tent on Randall’s Island. All photos by Christian Grattan unless otherwise noted.

We often post work we see by General Idea at art fairs and that’s because it’s one of the few examples of socially minded art-making that regularly gets exhibited. Above are some paintings of some very dirty poodles in neon. Presumably they represent the gay trio, two of whom later died of AIDS.

A good reminder that Ryan McGinley is actually a very good photographer. (His later staged photographs don’t do much for me.) These portraits of Dash Snow from 2000 – 2001 feel inspired by Larry Clark, and that’s a good thing; they’re gritty.

Anton Kern brought a notably flashy, open-aired booth with some walk-in rooms to house as much art as possible. There was art on the sides of the corridors, on top of them, as well as the inside. The gallery desk and chairs were for sale, too, designed by Martino Gamper. Gotta make full use of the booth! Prices ranged from $6,000 apiece for a John Bock collage (several were inside the small corridor) and $8,500 for Dan McCarthy’s ceramics (seen atop the small corridor), to pricier double-digit works by Francis Upritchard, David Shrigley, and Mark Grotjahn, among others.

This is what visitors do at an art fair: Gawk at the art and talk on their phones. The otherworldly, green-and-blue skinned sculpture goes by the name of “AC Flash DC” and comes from Francis Upritchard at Anton Kern. Photo: Corinna Kirsch.

Hauser & Wirth brought a curated show that would’ve felt at home at any major museum; this seems to be standard fare for the gallery’s showroom program, so we liked to see that translate to the fairs as well. This go around, the gallery brought a curated booth titled On the Fabric of the Human Body, curated by Gianni Jetzer, formerly of the Swiss Institute. For us, it was doubly refreshing to see art-fair art united by an idea—here, the weirdness, grossness, and bloodiness of the human body. From left to right: Rita Ackermann (painting), Louise Bourgeois (sculpture and drawings), and Isa Genzken (sculpture).

Doug Aitken’s text-based works always make the rounds at an art fair. Last year, 303 Gallery brought a Doug Aitken that said “ART.” This year, Regen Projects brought one that said “MAGIC.”

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.’s Kara Walker cut-outs were noticeably bubbling off the wall. Someone call an art handler, ASAP!

If those hats look familiar, it just means you’ve been to the Whitney Biennial. We spotted plenty of artists from this year’s WhiBi at Frieze—and we noticed the same thing back in March at the Armory Show. Pictured here is Ei Arakawa’s “Critical Aloha!” wall-piece framed by a string of soccer balls and gold chains, “The Day When Soccer Became Money,” a collaboration between Arakawa and Henning Bohl. The point of saying all this? Commercial crossover with the Whitney Biennial does exist!

Poop! Okay, it’s actually an untitled work by Boris Lurie brought by the Box, a gallery based out of Los Angeles. Photo: Corinna Kirsch.

Sean Kelly brought this five-panel image of the Perito Moreno glacier by Frank Theil, which had already been sold by the time we arrived. I tried to get a sense of the purchaser, since this is the kind of glacier porn that seems perfect for a corporate boardroom, but the woman I spoke to could only tell me that it had been sold to a collector, not a museum.

I don’t remember a fair Jack Shainman has attended where he didn’t bring those Nick Cave Sound Suits. These ones are better than average, but this is the epitome of an art fair staple.

Allan Ruppersberg’s recreation of his 1971 conceptual artwork “Al’s Hotel.” Basically, it was a cafe that grew really popular and then was turned into a hotel for six weeks. The hotel was run almost exclusively by Ruppersberg, which meant a lot of house cleaning. That’s The New York Times’ Randy Kennedy in the foreground of this picture, who published a feature on the piece yesterday evening.

This enormous display of Carroll Dunham at Gladstone looks impressive, but the actual drawings vary in quality significantly. One gets the sense that Gladstone had a lot of Dunham inventory around and wanted to find a way to move it.