London (Frieze & Sluice) Art Fairs

Sluice 3rd floor view

Art Fairs bring new customers to buy new art work. The whole idea is to sell. So when an art fair happen it brings a new proposal outside what is already in vogue. It bring wide range of new proposals; new ideas working together with references of the past. Some artworks that we are able to find within take inspiration from contemporary everyday life, others are developed on lost and old narratives and stories. Artist make new proposals and conscriptions about things that are in the process of take-off, such as the one we can find at Sluice Art Fair. The inspiration on an leading art fair, such as is Frieze, comes from resemblances to paintings, techniques and forms easily associated by collectors, buyers and advisors. We can take also, as examples, the new comer Strarta Art Fair, held one week before at Saatchi Gallery, or PAD London (Art and Design), held during the same week, in Berkeley Square.

A market is an essential element to the dynamics and to keep society alive and thriving. Market in the system of infrastructures that allow multiple and vary relations to exchange things between different parties. Without it society and will perish on the long term. A distinctive image is created by those two market proposals. An illusion of worlds and desires comes to mind. We can find a wide range of witty environments and places. Some carved into to the multi-layered society others printed like cocktail bars on our imagination. A mixture of natural forms and experiences from all over the world. In particular, an artwork reflects on the artists skillfulness to understand his or her surrounding environment in very different ways.

Working simultaneously in very different projects we can perceive the worriers that artists go to collaborate with each other. In the long term, they will became the face (brand) representing each art fair. Sluice is an alternative environment, a laboratory that bringing together artists projects such as Filmarmalade, The Modern Language Experience, Transition Gallery, Division of Labour. The overall idea is to develop a collectors base and interest to pick up on what is being done by amazing artists and offered by the art market. At Frieze, saw a marvellous work by Sandra Gamarra (Genesis 1:26. Then God said: "Let US make main in Our image according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 12 Oil painting on newspaper, various sizes 8 of 40x29cm, 44x29cm, 58x35cm and 2 of 47x32cm, 2013, between £10-50k), yesterday - "that was sold this morning, _____ saw it, pay for it and took it with him. We had to replaced it for some beautiful works by Alix [Monologo con un cuervo, photograph, 47x47cm, 2011, under £10k] and Gonnord [Sorraia I, photograph 148x110cm, 2013, under £10k]", expressed the enchanting and passionate Juana de Aizpuru (Galeria Juana de Aizupuru, from Madrid, Spain). Adding, further, collector here know what they are buying. You can't bring whatever you think and expect to sell. They don't take a pig in a poke.

Frieze is where bright young projects are on display assembled together with masters and artists that are already inscribed in the art history books. When we came to an art fair we shouldn't create a dialogue between what we see and what we want to be appearing. Everyone brings their own boxes full of trinkets and learning dynamics about creative processes.

Since we are a generation of physically and online shop-keepers. We move around connections between individuals. Where a need to create is imperative. In terms of selling and buying, they all have to pay their bills, like any normal human being.

Dora García, The Joycean Society (installation 100x70cm, £10-50k), 2013 at Galería Juana de Aizpuru

For an art fair like Sluice the level of risks is higher, because it is focused on a unique segment of the market. Frieze was there, but through its deviced practice and positioning went to play a different game. They create the scene when on an international framework the environment was already in place. Both through connections (physical and online), pushing barriers and because the world became more fragmented with its particular structure where different things can exist at the same time while sharing the same space. The end game is what and where we hope to be at the end of it. An art fair is a Life Style where we buy and sell things. Being these things sensibilities, experiences, settings, engagements, bodily printings, i.e., artworks. For a moment Sluice artworks recall Cosmococa (Block-Experiments in Cosmococa – program in progress (1973–74)), by Helio Oiticica and Neville d'Almeida shown by A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) stand, at Frieze, proposals merging individual life-experience with art.

We have the choice to pic up things, objects. What was not real ten, twenty years ago. Although we still have the same gate-keepers and spaces. But we came to expect the unexpected. We, sellers and buyers, navigate in communion voluptuously and inconspicuously through that territory. Collecting history and stories connecting origins, ways of living and bring.

So, if we consider the economic depression that started in 2008, creativity arouses. People move around. Exchanges and unexpected and bizarre ideas and decisions take effects. A new identity is re-created. Inspiring a new generation of sellers and buyers that will push a set of perimeters in the next ten years. Those that we might see at what will Frieze represents to us nowadays. Social media although still being a swamp is what drives what we do. From personal life comments to professional interests to bring a working tool to promote and brand ideas - it is where ideas became visible.

Note: Tickets to Frieze London are now completely sold out! Sluice after party on Sunday evening... that should rock & quick