ART REVIEW
Don’t be daunted by the fair’s nearly 200 booths. Our critics have done the walking and have found the standouts.
By Martha Schwendener and
Getting into this year’s Frieze Art Fair on Randalls Island will cost you $57, plus the round trip on the ferry. But that’s nothing compared to what it cost nearly 200 galleries to exhibit there. And so dealers have made the reasonable decision to bring a little of everything that sells — which may account for the conservative vibe. That said, there are many islands of daring, including special sections focused on solo presentations, small galleries, the influential gallery JAM and virtual reality. We sampled them all — along with the mainland fairs that are part of Frieze Week. Our art critics Martha Schwendener and Will Heinrich pick a handful of the best booths under Frieze New York’s big tent.
A vibrant knot of color and form awaits you at the intersection of New York’s Koenig & Clinton and Kate Werble galleries and Warsaw’s lokal_30. From Poland come three painters exemplifying postwar and contemporary Surrealism, among them the young Ewa Juszkiewicz, who repaints classic portraits of women, but hides their faces with cloth, ears of corn or a backward French braid. They evoke feminism, dream logic and implicit violence. Tony Marsh’s over-the-top ceramic vessels, encrusted in what look like shards of glaze, meet the eye-bending optical paintings of Anoka Faruqee & David Driscoll at Koenig & Clinton. Marilyn Lerner makes delicately complicated oil-on-wood abstractions at Kate Werble; don’t miss the unlabeled low tables by Christopher Chiappa, also in Werble’s booth. HEINRICH