George Lindemann Journal - "Art Matters | Highlights from a Frieze Week of Art and Revelry" @nytimes By KEVIN MCGARRY
Adam ReichGreengrassi, a London gallery, was awarded the Stand Prize at Frieze New York for its presentation of postwar Japanese art.
The third edition of Frieze New York cemented the second week in May as the highlight of the city’s art calendar. The festivities’ official start date is fuzzy, but if social media is any indication, it might have been Tuesday at the heavily Instagrammed unveiling of the colossal sugar sphinx by Kara Walker at the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, where Creative Time, the public art organization that commissioned the work, held its annual gala.
But it wasn’t until Thursday that the first V.I.P.s made their way all the way to Randall’s Island for the actual fair. And what a lot of V.I.P.s there were! By midday, it was so difficult to get a table at any of the restaurant outposts dotting the super-sized tent that even Uma Thurman was told by a Frankies Spuntino host to leave her phone number if she would like to sit down for pasta in about an hour.
Daniele BaliceThe model Lily McMenamy danced rowdily at the Fairytale Lounge just before a police raid ended the festivities.Frieze succeeded in galvanizing a superlative art week. Greengrassi, from London, was awarded the Stand Prize for the most inventive presentation out of almost 200 participating galleries. Co-curated by Cornelia Grassi and the independent curator Joshua Mack, the gallery’s booth showcased politically charged paintings and works on paper by five Japanese artists spanning the second half of the 20th century.
As a counterpoint to all the lavish sit-down dinners hosted by galleries and fancy fundraisers for nonprofit organizations, on Friday, the Paris gallery Balice Hertling rented out a slightly seedy gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen, the Fairytale Lounge, to celebrate the curator Alexander May’s group show, “Warm Math,” opening in the nearby Film Center building. Just as things were heating up, the model Lily McMenamy jumped onto the bar to grind alongside a burly go-go dancer, only to be interrupted by undercover cops who stormed the bar. Days later, the place remains closed.
One of the aforementioned splendid meals was Artists Space’s annual dinner on Saturday in honor of the artist Christopher Williams, held at the Ukranian National Home in the East Village and catered by the London-based chef Margot Henderson. Jutta Koether and John Miller’s noise band XXX Macarena flooded the speakers, and the legendary Lawrence Weiner led a toast. The place was packed with artists, including Michele Abeles, Rebecca Quaytman, Rachel Harrison, Kimsooja, Zoe Leonard, Nick Mauss, Tony Oursler, Sam Pulitzer and Lari Pittman.
Courtesy of Clearing, New YorkKorakrit Arundachaoi, “Untitled (History Painting),” 2013, at MoMA PS1.That same night, MoMA PS1 celebrated the three-year anniversary of its Volkswagen sponsorship with a new installment of its popular “Night at the Museum” series. The museum swelled with guests, as well as with a slate of excellent shows celebrating young, local talent — Korakrit Arundachaoi, James Ferraro and G.C.C., a collective of artists originally from the Persian Gulf — and several departed European greats, including the German provocateur Christoph Schlingensief and the Austrian painter Maria Lassnig, who passed away last week at 94.
Those with serious art stamina awoke on Sunday to trek up to Greenwich, Conn., to visit the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, which feted Dan Colen’s solo show there with an afternoon luncheon. The event’s exclusive nature was perhaps best represented by a photo, reposted to Instagram by the artist Jeannette Hayes, of Larry Gagosian napping on a grassy knoll.
By Monday, many dealers had already flown 12 time zones east to set up shop for the second edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong, which opens tomorrow. An atypically modest denouement for the week was held that night in the East Village studio of the artist Izhar Patkin, where the International Association of Art Critics (A.I.C.A.) held an awards ceremony for the 2013 exhibitions and writers chosen to be honored by its members. Museum directors like Thelma Golden, Lisa Phillips and Klaus Biesenbach shared space with the often faceless heroes of the art world’s writer class, including the blogger Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes and Barry Schwabsky of The Nation, who received awards for their criticism. The bonds in that room seemed to have been forged not through money but time — decades of watching artists, curators, writers and dealers grow up in this strange, somehow self-sustaining world where all art, all the time, is the norm.