ThinkingThroughThings: ANOTHER WAY OF ENJOYING ART FAIRS

Every year I drag myself to Frieze Art Fair. And every year I come to the same conclusion: I really enjoy it for the first 30 minutes and then I am slowly overwhelmed by what surrounds me: too big, too much to see, not enough explanation. I usually finish the exhibition as if I was running a marathon. It’s a shame.

Frieze is THE place where tribes of extremely powerful, rich, intelligent, well-educated art-related people of the entire planet gather… It is so intimidating. I don’t belong and everything is organised there to make you feel that way. So this year I tried to think about those feelings beforehand and decided to try a little experiment. I decided to pick up every WHITE artwork. Like a treasure hunt. And you know, what? It was highly fun and I really enjoyed Frieze for the first time.

But then I started to think about it. Why was it so enjoyable?

First and to be honest, because I picked up a theme that is important to me: white. But then, I think I enjoyed it because it had no sense whatsoever. No clever connection between the pieces, no sophisticated curating, no references to artistic movements or schools… Just something so simple that even a child can do it. Another way of enjoying Art Fairs.

So it gave me other ideas for next year. This year was about colour, but I might try by size (starting from the smallest one to the biggest one), by materials used (wood, steel, fabric…), by weight, by value (if the materials used are cheap or expensive) or location (hung on the wall, put on the floor, on a chair or table…). All those classification will probably be irrelevant and disconnected from the artists’ messages but it might give very different interesting angles to the exhibited artworks…

Here are my Frieze 2010 WHITE findings (Pictures Isabelle Busnel):