Financial Times: Article / Review
Original Source: https://www.ft.com/content/a184d654-8c6c-11e6-8cb7-e7ada1d123b1?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Section: Life & Arts
Written by: Rachel Spence
Published: 07.10.2016
Title: Frieze satellite fairs: Sunday, Moniker, The Other Art Fair — review
Sunday Art Fair is everything Frieze is not: intimate, edgy, defiantly unconcerned with market forces.
The diminutive Sunday Art Fair in London’s Marylebone has built a stellar reputation on being everything Frieze is not: intimate, edgy, defiantly unconcerned with market forces. At times however, the fair’s Pop-friendly vibe has resulted in an overload of art that would look equally at home in a skip or a toyshop as a gallery. Iulia Toma’s ‘Dura-Europos’ at Ivan Gallery, Sunday Art Fair This year, a plethora of weightier pieces elevated the mood. What a thrill to see, at Bucharest’s Ivan Gallery, a suite of delicate mixed-media collages by Romanian grande dame Geta Bratescu. Priced at Euros 45,000 for all eight, they surely won’t be there by Sunday. On the same booth, sewn images of groups of refugees by Bratescu’s younger compatriot Iulia Toma take shape through stitched lines whose stuttering energy accentuates their human vulnerability. At Spain’s Galerie Nogueras Blanchard, there’s a stunning row of post-card-sized abstract paintings on wood by Alain Biltereyst. Formerly a graphic designer, Biltereyst has a cracking eye for signs. He’s scooped up his diagonals, bars and stripes from those under-the-radar urban patterns such as truck logos and manhole covers, Although excellent value at €2000 each, the low prices don’t prevent gallerist Rebeca Blanchard from observing laconically, “We do this fair because if you sell something here you can actually make some money, unlike at Frieze [where the booths are more expensive]”. ‘First Sitting’ by Gregory Mason, at The Other Art Fair Happily, Sunday’s ludic touch hasn’t been entirely lost. LA-based gallery Anat Ebgi brought the beach with them when they installed London-based artist Neil Raitt’s folkish landscape paintings (from $4,500 to $16000) in a tented booth on a pile of real sand, as if they were being sold by a Pop artist on a Venice Beach boardwalk. That cheeky mood is de rigueur at Moniker Art Fair in Shoreditch’s Old Truman Brewery, which started life as showcase for urban daredevils and still specialises in street-style graphics, although many of its participants have never scaled a building in their lives. Still, no one could doubt the courage of Max Zorn at Stick Together gallery as he created an image in situ entirely out of masking tape. Once turned over, the results are shiny, comic-sharp images whose Hollywood-noir glamour gives them the air of sepia film-stills.
Equally striking but more painterly were oils by Sam Hewitt at Brighton’s Dynamite Gallery. A series of a young girl in a swimsuit had the blotchy, old-world confidence of Jenny Saville. Little wonder Hewitt had sold well the night before, with one of his canvases fetching £4,500.
Irresistibility of the Carefree – tape artwork by Max Zorn
‘The Irresistible of the carefree’ by Max Zorn, Stick Together gallery
Moniker’s neighbour is the Other Art Fair, which specialises in artist-run booths. Now owned by online gallery Saatchi Art, it lacked the quota of genuinely unpredictable quirkiness that previously made it a mine of possibility. Nevertheless, it’s still worth visiting to truffle out emerging painters such as Emily Marbach, who uses acrylic inks to create collages where lonely, painted figures are attached to enigmatic, sylvan landscapes as if, says Marbach, they had just wandered “in or out of a difficult conversation”. A similar existential mystery animates Iona Stern’s oil and charcoal paintings (prints from £100 to £850) where white, quasi-unfinished figures seem steal their space from the surrounding abstract colour panels. There’s nothing abstract about Gregory Mason’s paintings of nudes and portraits which stride their surfaces with classical presence. Furthermore, his decision to sign up to the fair’s Own Art programme — which allows buyers to pay monthly on interest-free credit — makes his work as financially accessible as it is visually striking. To October 9, sundayartfair.com, monikerartfair.com, theotherartfair.com