Cold Hard Cash

As a classical art enthusiast, I would be the first to admit that I can be somewhat pessimistic when it comes to contemporary art. Long have I held the somewhat closed-minded view that a number of today’s more renowned modern artists are in fact talentless criminals with a license to print/paint money because they’re able to tell some quite exotic lies about what their pieces mean. In short, I was perhaps a little harsh...

I know my previous statement may have rubbed some people up the wrong way, but I often find myself in front some sort of bin bag chainsaw motif and wonder, why? Why is this considered art? How can someone spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on something that appears to be the result of a drunken elephant attacking the artist’s bins? Am I the only one who thinks this? I suspect not.

The fact is that it’s easy to get held up on the work of a few high profile artists whose ‘creations’ hit the media due to their controversial nature. They should not be allowed to affect our judgement on the rest of the genre, as I found out in quite a magnificent fashion on my trip this weekend to the Frieze Arts Fair.

The Frieze Arts Fair is an annual event comprised of some 150 plus specially selected contemporary art galleries from around the world, all descending on Regents Park to exhibit work and celebrate modern contemporary art. Each gallery is given a small section of a giant temporary structure in which to exhibit some of their choice artist’s best work. The main aim here is to use vivid displays to promote the gallery and create networking opportunities with the incontinently rich (of which there appeared to be no shortage). I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen over 150 galleries all trying to out-do each other in one enclosed area, but the result is quite spectacular.

My entrance to the fair was overlooked by the wax-work of a slightly worried looking small child on a 10ft diving board, next to which sat a giant mirror which regularly tremored and rippled violently on the wall, causing one immediately to feel slightly queasy. I backed away and decided to take a bit of a look around at anything that wasn’t the mirror. Each gaze swept over a mix of vibrant colours, weird experimentations, intricate and methodical design and literally anything else you could think of, between which milled hundreds of people from all walks of life. The obvious scruffy or plain unusual looking artists, immaculately suited businessmen and equally well dressed women. One woman appeared to be wearing nothing at all except a heavy layer of paint and tattoos with a pair of practically non-existent spandex hot-pants, all the while being followed round by a tall spaced out looking man wielding a small video camera, while she appeared to flirt with the exhibits...

Yes it was strange, but God it was exciting! Pieces that I might not have looked at twice in any other setting suddenly took on new meaning in the buzzing atmosphere which permeated the entire building, each work giving its own special something to the surroundings.

Of course there were still some things that I struggled with: some childishly drawn figures in black marker pen on pieces of paper smaller than A4, a skeleton painted black, what appeared to be a charred pile of industrial waste... You get the picture.

The important thing was that there were some great surprises. A large work by Tomory Dodge was simply comprised of a number of thick lines of bright paint on a dark background, the net effect being a futuristic, almost luminous vision. Another fantastic achievement was by Tomas Saraceno with his hanging sculpture entitled ‘Hydrogen Cloud Explosion’, which managed to bring what could be considered some dull geometry to life by filling it with an explosion of black elastic.

When I eventually left the Frieze it was with high spirits. I had expected to leave with irritation before my arrival and yet instead I left with hope. Real art is not dead. There are some massively talented and wonderfully quirky people out there who probably spend their lives in a world that I was privileged enough to experience for a few short hours. I hope the contemporary art scene continues its twisting and turning progression until next year. I will definitely be back.