The 18 Best Booths at Frieze London and Frieze Masters

The 16th edition of Frieze London opens to the public on Thursday, with some 160 galleries participating. If you leave the main tent hungry for more art, a 15-minute walk through Regent’s Park brings you to the seventh edition of Frieze Masters, where more than 130 galleries are showing older work (here, “older” simply meaning pre–21st century). As part of the main fair, there’s also live performance programming from artists like Camille Henrot and Liz Glynn, and Frieze Sculpture, which places outdoor installations by Virginia Overton, Tim Etchells, and others throughout the park. Art fairs, as usual, can get exhausting. If your time (or attention span) is limited, here are 18 presentations across both Frieze London and Frieze Masters that you shouldn’t miss.

kamel mennour

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth A2

With works by Tatiana Trouvé

The French gallery’s booth, located right by the entrance to the fair, is entirely given over to one massive, 30-ton sculpture by Tatiana Trouvé. The Shaman (2018) has as its centerpiece a patinated bronze tree, felled on its side, showing as much meticulous attention to detail as Charles Ray’s equally elaborate arboreal sculpture Hinoki (2007). A platform of crooked, partially broken concrete surrounds the tree, which is submerged in a small, burbling pool of water. Nearby, marble facsimiles of moving blankets and a pillow, plus some erratic strands of metal, complete the enigmatic scene. For all its apocalyptic undertones, the epic work is oddly contemplative. Cash-rich institutions, take note: The dramatic showpiece is on offer for €650,000.

The Modern Institute

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth D5

With works by Martin Boyce, Anne Collier, Jeremy Deller, Duggie Fields, Urs Fischer, Kim Fisher, Mark Handforth, Nicolas Party, Eva Rothschild, Hayley Tompkins, Michael Wilkinson, and more.

With works hung on eccentrically angled walls—plus a recreation of an entire bedroom tucked around a corner—the Glasgow-based gallery squeezes a lot into its space. The always-impressive Nicolas Party has a lush pastel portrait of a woman holding flowers, plus a bronze sculpture, Black Cat’s Head, which plays fast and loose with its interpretation of feline features.

A large textile banner by Jeremy Deller shouts its message, adapted from the opening line of a poem by John Betjeman: “Come, Friendly Bombs, and Fall on Eton.” Light Year 6035 (2017) by 2011 Turner Prize winner Martin Boyce is a standout: a painted triptych of perforated steel sheets, ornamented with a dangling industrial chandelier. And toward the back of the booth, don’t miss the faux “bedroom” by Duggie Fields, which is densely decorated with 1980s-chic paintings and ephemera.

Gagosian

Frieze Masters, Main Section, Booth C2

With works by Man Ray

Gagosian, with its booth devoted to a Man Ray survey, has brought a miniature museum exhibition to Frieze Masters. Small sculptures made from odds and ends—twine, metronomes, chessboards, springs, baguettes painted blue—are joined by photographs, paintings, and assemblages. A 1966 collage, entitled Demagogue, looks shockingly fresh, combining images of a parrot, a smiling blonde woman, and a silver wheel rim. A mixed-media work finds Man Ray mounting a toilet seat atop a photograph of an egg, and in Anal Sunrise (1956), he puts an anatomical spin on the landscape tradition. Not everything here is a masterpiece, certainly, but the pieces combine to form a picture of an artist who wasn’t afraid to follow his quirkiest inclinations.

Simon Lee Gallery

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth E6

With works by Jim Shaw

Ah, Jim Shaw—what a welcome salve for our desperate times! The artist—a peer of Mike Kelley and a like-minded aficionado of pop-cultural weirdness—has one of Frieze’s most cohesive, must-see solo presentations. First, there’s the wallpaper, whose patterns resemble Rorschach patterns of smeared gold. Look more closely and you’ll find that the pattern is made up of many contorted, cartoon faces of Donald Trump.

The works hanging atop this fitting homage to the U.S. president are what look like history paintings, if they were based on Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! sketches.One of them presents a scene of Aztec sacrifice, with cameos from Richard Nixon, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone (the latter holds a knife and someone’s bloody heart). A smaller piece appropriates Francisco de Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son (1820–23), superimposed with Uncle Sam’s “I Want You For U.S. Army” recruitment poster. In an even stranger painting, reclusive right-wing funder Robert Mercer smiles proudly in front of an alien abduction scene unfolding in the parking lot of a restaurant called “Ass Burgers.” The world might be going to hell, but at least we have Shaw to chronicle the dramatic end as we flame out.

Galerie Chenel

Frieze Masters, Main Section, Booth C11

With works by Marc Held and various sculptural works from antiquity

One of the appeals of Frieze Masters is the way it forces wildly different eras to coexist; Artemisia Gentileschi, Giorgio Morandi, Steven Parrino, and Dutch still lifes all have to share the same big tent. This Parisian gallery exemplifies the appeal of that transhistorical approach in something so simple as its choice of furniture: a set of sleek Marc Held chairs from 1967, from which prospective buyers can admire precious fragments of ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian sculptures.

The Approach

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth C16

With works by Heidi Bucher, Sara Cwynar, Allison Katz, Caitlin Keogh, Jack Lavender, Patrick Procktor, Magali Reus, John Stezaker, and Evren Tekinoktay

Using textiles, latex, and mother-of-pearl, the late Swiss artist Heidi Bucher applied her materials to the insides of rooms or to discrete interior details, peeling them off to create what she dubbed “skinnings.” (The process-based results have something in common with rubber works by American artist Robert Overby from the early 1970s.) The gallery is showing Wassertor (“Water Gate,” 1986), which is on offer for 250,000 Swiss francs. It’s a large, wall-mounted piece that is uncommon for Bucher, in that the form mimics nature, rather than architecture—in this case, a cascading flume of water.

Other standout works on view include Jack Lavender’s Remember me to them (2018), a totem-like sculpture pairing skulls with scratch-off lotto tickets, and three figurative paintings by Allison Katz, whose surfaces are enlivened by the inclusion of sand or rice.

Salon 94

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth C5

With works by Marina Adams, Lyle Ashton Harris, Takuro Kuwata, Max Lamb, Marilyn Minter, Jayson Musson, and Laurie Simmons

The gallery’s aim here is to unite the design and fine art aspects of its programming, and the results are winning. A mob of chairs by Max Lamb cluster in the center of the booth; priced between $18,000 and $40,000, they’re composed of carved Styrofoam covered with thermal spray aluminum. Contorted ceramics by Takuro Kuwata—including one that is dotted with awkward gold protuberances—have a similarly raw energy. Looming behind it all is Marilyn Minter’s three-panel Big Bang (2012)—a photorealistic depiction of a spidering bullet hole in a sheet of water-streaked glass—which is going for $550,000.

Galería Elvira González

Frieze Masters, Main Section, Booth E9

With works by Carl Andre and Donald Judd

The Madrid-based gallery is showing these two giants of American Minimalism together, with a focus on their work in wood. Carl Andre’s Pyramus and Thisbe (1990), composed of 20 blocks of Western red cedar, is installed on either side of one of the booth’s walls. It jibes nicely with a four-part series of wall-mounted Donald Judd sculptures from the 1980s and ’90s, made of unadorned Douglas fir plywood.

Galerie Greta Meert

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth B14

With works by Edith Dekyndt, Jean-Luc Moulène, Anne Neukamp, Thomas Struth, and Pieter Vermeersch

This smartly curated presentation unfurls around ideas of abstraction and the effects of light. The works include Pieter Vermeersch’s Untitled (2018), a composition of pure color, with a pinkish-salmon hue that subtly fades into white at the top of the canvas. It’s priced at €35,000, perhaps a savvy buy in advance of the artist’s upcoming survey at Museum Leuven.

Hanging across from the Vermeersch is Edith Dekyndt’s Havbro (2016), an IKEA rug that the artist has covered in silver leaf; the material slowly oxidizes, meaning it’ll require a collector who isn’t afraid of change. (The Dekyndt is on offer for €45,000.) Jean-Luc Moulène, meanwhile, contributes a simple abstract work—a bisected rectangle, with one side done in silver leaf and the other in heavy graphite scrawl—as well as a bronze sculpture of a hat. Altogether, the Brussels-based gallery sets an elegant yet inventive mood.

Modern Art

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth A5

With works by Yngve Holen, Sanya Kantarovsky, Josh Kline, Phillip Lai, and Steven Shearer

The London-based gallery uses its booth’s significant footprint sparingly, with each work given ample breathing room—pun intended in the case of a Josh Kline sculpture of a businessman curled into a fetal position, wrapped suffocatingly in a plastic bag. No matter how often one sees this series, it doesn’t get any less jarring. Looming across from two monotypes by Sanya Kantarovsky are a pair of 2-meter-wide wood sculptures by Yngve Holen. They’re modeled on Range Rover rims, but are meant to resemble the design of certain Catholic church windows.

Sprüth Magers

Frieze Masters, Main Section, Booth F12

With works by Bernd & Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Ruff

The Dusseldorf School of Photography is the focus of this Berlin-, London-, and Los Angeles–based gallery’s booth, bringing together classic works by Bernd & Hilla Becher with that of their former students Thomas Ruff and Andreas Gursky. Of special note are the selections from Ruff’s first formal photo series, made in the early 1980s: understated, small-scale images of the interiors of German homes. Gursky’s Bochum University (1988) is captivating in a different way: an ordinary scene of students congregating on a campus patio made sublime, thanks to the grandeur of the surrounding landscape.

W&K - Wienerroither & Kohlbacher

Frieze Masters, Main Section, Booth G24

With works by Günter Brus, George Grosz, Gustav Klimt, Elke Krystufek, Elizabeth Peyton, Egon Schiele, and Franz West

The Vienna- and New York–based gallery brings a smart mix of early and late 20th-century work, mingling Franz West collages and sculptures with a tiny tondo portrait of Marie Antoinette by Elizabeth Peyton, as well as drawings by George Grosz, Egon Schiele, and Gustav Klimt. The latter two artists command a cozy back room built into the booth, a sedated setting to take in their effortlessly evocative lines. And while both Schiele and Klimt are known for the eroticism in their work, they’re no match for Viennese Actionism co-founder Günter Brus. His 1970 drawing Freizeitgestaltung (“Leisure Activities”) is not for the squeamish.

Garth Greenan Gallery

Frieze Masters, Spotlight Section, Booth H12

With works by Rosalyn Drexler

In these works from the early 1960s, Rosalyn Drexler evidences an omnivorous appetite for subject matter, pulling from nudie magazines, books about the mob, promotional photos of the Beatles, and news images. As part of the Pop art scene, Drexler followed a simple but generative process: gluing down images appropriated from various sources, and then painting directly atop them. Because of that, her paintings have a “craftiness” that isn’t present in the work of someone like Roy Lichtenstein, according to gallerist Garth Greenan.

Luxembourg & Dayan

Frieze Masters, Main Section, Booth H1

With works by Rodolfo Aricò, Stefano Arienti, Jean (Hans) Arp, Erico Baj, Alighiero Boetti, Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder, César, Gino De Dominicis, Gisetta Fioroni, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, Fausto Melotti, Claes Oldenburg, Steven Parrino, Mimmo Rotella, Ed Ruscha, Mario Schifano, Andy Warhol, and Franz West

Let’s face it: Booths get boring, fast. In trying to break free of the constraints of the form, galleries can easily misstep. (I’m looking at you, White Cube, and your confounding decision to install various paintings and sculptures on and around purpose-built metal partitions.) Luxembourg & Dayan’s solution is smart—the gallery has constructed an intricate, light-green shelving unit with cubbies to hold dozens of small-scale paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

“Minimonuments,” as the selection is called, includes plenty of Alighiero Boetti pieces, along with modest works by Claes Oldenburg, Mimmo Rotella, Ed Ruscha, and Alexander Calder. My only qualm is the exceedingly male-heavy roster, with Gisetta Fioroni being the only woman artist featured in this handsome space.

Galerie EIGEN + ART

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth A11

With works by Martin Eder, Stella Hamberg, Ricarda Roggan, and Bosco Sodi

The highlight of this eclectic booth is I Sold My Devil to the Soul (2018), a large-scale, ironically sentimental painting of a kitten by Martin Eder, who has a concurrent solo show on view in London at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery. The work has an asking price of €110,000. It’s joined by two other Eder canvases, as well as a few earthy, crackled abstract paintings by Bosco Sodi and a series of black-and-white photographs by Leipzig-based artist Ricarda Roggan (€6,000 each, in an edition of three). The latter are sober studies of simple objects—utensils, small sculptures—sourced from museums, which once belonged to German authors, philosophers, and other notables. Roggan travels to these institutions with a sort of “mobile suitcase studio,” as senior director Astrid Hamm put it, shooting each item against the same backdrop using a Hasselblad camera.

Casey Kaplan

Frieze London, Main Section, Booth D8

With works by Kevin Beasley, Jordan Casteel, Sarah Crowner, N. Dash, Judith Eisler, Haris Epaminonda, Jonathan Gardner, Giorgio Griffa, Mateo López, Matthew Ronay, and Garth Weiser

The New York gallery’s eclectic tastes are on full display here. From Kevin Beasley’s painting-shaped mass of compacted CDs, clothing, jewelry, and other materials ($75,000) to the figurative paintings of Jordan Casteel; the cool minimalism of N. Dash ($52,000); and the carved-wood whimsy of Matthew Ronay ($32,000), there’s something for every aesthetic sensibility. Garth Weiser’s glinting silver abstract painting is also a stunner, leaning heavily on the influence of the late Jack Whitten.

Waddington Custot

Frieze Masters, Main Section, Booth G2

With works by Patrick Caulfield, Allan D’Arcangelo, and John Wesley

The focus of this booth is the interplay between Americans John Wesley and Allan D’Arcangelo and British artist Patrick Caulfield. All three possess a graphic style that hews close to illustration or sign-painting techniques, and each subjects familiar imagery to an off-kilter dream logic. Wesley’s canvases can often seem like jokes without punchlines, relying on simple imagery and repetition: two bulls floating over a bed, a row of moustached men. Caulfield mixes clean, rigid outlines with areas that are much more worked over; in Still Life: Father’s Day (1975), the roses at the bottom left provide a pop of unexpected verisimilitude. D’Arcangelo, in works from the 1960s, applies a punchy, pared-down approach to road markings and highway vistas.

Gió Marconi

Frieze Masters, Main Section, Booth G14

With works by Valerio Adami