Frieze New York has learned to play to ArtReview‘s one weakness: outdoor drinking. (Actually, it’s drinking in general; but “outdoor” makes it Frieze specific.) this year’s fair manages to take advantage of the three days of spring that New York enjoys before the summer heat and humidity kick in and the artworld dashes off to Venice or the Hamptons or to [enter horrible pun-based yacht name here]. When it did go in the big top (which was as little as possible), ArtReview saw a great new, and big – very big – dyptch by Rosy Keyser (at Peter Blum) that trades oil for corrugated steel and ties itself together with heavy-gauge wire. Down the same corridor one really shouldn’t miss the platform filled with mini ceramic vaginas… er, sculptures by Hannah Wilke (at Alison Jacques), which look as fresh (can one say that?) today as they must have when they were made in the 1970s. A less refined rag would call it ‘quality snatch’, but ArtReview, good n’th generation feminist that it is, doesn’t go in for that. Tom Friedman served up a big pizza (literally) at Luhring Augustine which goes with the good-gustation theme that Frieze New York pushes by inviting trendy food spots from around the city to keep ArtReview balanced on its six-inch heels. If there’s one drawback to Frieze’s food-and-light-washed tent though (besides being murderous on ArtReview‘s decidedly nocturnal complexion), it’s that James Nares’s new roadpaint paintings (one on view at Paul Kasmin) don’t dazzle the way they do at night under the pop of an iPhone LED flash. Or maybe that was just Jim Jarmusch.
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