‘Who Is That? What’s Happening?’: Decoding the Art World at Frieze

Every October, one of the world’s major art fairs takes place in a huge tent on the edge of Regent’s Park. For five days, the park’s year-round population — joggers, parents pushing buggies, teenagers playing soccer — is augmented by thousands of people at Frieze London seeking an encounter with contemporary art — or at least an encounter with the contemporary art world, which is just as much of a spectacle, in its way.

Some of these people wear all black, some dress like the rich villains in “The Hunger Games” and some carry battered LL Bean tote bags that say “GAGOSIAN.” Striding into the tent on the preview day this Wednesday, they were talking with varying degrees of enthusiasm about what and who they were going to see. I overheard two women use the words “fresh hell,” and saw a young man so excited he was practically in tears.

Even for veterans of the art fair circuit, there is a frightening amount to see at Frieze London: over 160 booths this year from 43 countries in the main tent and a sister event, Frieze Masters, devoted to pre-21st century artworks, across the park. For an outsider, the challenge is compounded. In addition to looking at as much as art as possible and attempting to form a handful of defensible opinions, there is the difficulty of decoding the system itself, its rules and what makes it tick.

An hour after the fair had opened on Wednesday morning to a restricted audience of high-paying collectors, curators, reporters and art-world cognoscenti, a lesson about how hype develops was playing out in the Focus section, which highlights young galleries and emerging artists.

A small group of people had begun to gather near the booth for Brunette Coleman, a London gallery showing at the fair for the first time, with works by Nat Faulkner, a young English artist who makes experimental photographs. Faulkner had just been announced as the winner of a prize: the Camden Art Center Emerging Artist Award, which offers an artist from the Focus section the opportunity to realize a solo show at the London art space, supported by its curatorial team. As more people drifted over without quite seeming to know why, Martin Clark, the center’s director, began to give a presumably heartfelt, but almost inaudible, speech (sound travels strangely in a tent) about the need to give young artists space for risk and experimentation.