Click here to read Tom's guide to 2009's London Art Fairs.
OK, it's Friday night and I'm at Zoo Art Fair. It's my last art fair this week, and to be honest I'm shattered. But you know, duty calls and all that. I turn up round the back of the Royal Academy and there's loads of fellows in camo-uniform milling about. Are they real soldiers? Or art? Probably art, but I can never quite work it out.
The atmosphere at Zoo is a refreshing contrast from Frieze. Gone are the world's mega rich art investors. Everyone seems to be here to look, rather than simply to buy, or to chat to arty chums, old and new. The crowd is quite fashion: lots of tight trousers, patent leather hi-tops, the odd jauntily angled baseball cap. It's less Bottega Veneta, more b store, which is something of a relief. There's one particularly striking yellow-suited dude in a wheelchair next to his lilac-clad wifey. They look ace!
And Zoo is just more fun because, unlike Frieze, the galleries generally make a bit of an effort to do something interesting with the space that they've been allocated. Bischoff/Weiss for example have decked out their whole area with charred black wood panelling, whilst all the black and gold in Xanadu/t1+2 makes it look like the office of a shrink who treats only extravagant 1980s coke dealers. There's a dead swan slumped on a high shiny black plinth, its neck knotted in the middle, and two gigantic Rorschach Tests on the back wall.
As I've mentioned elsewhere I'm really into small detailed paintings right now, so Natalia Goldin, Stockholm is a real treat. There's GL Brierley's four small shiny brown galaxies, textured like wood and marble and '70s diamond-patterned ties. Andy Harper's oil on plywood Diamond Dog is great: all rich and bright with wet-look grass and berries. I also like Petra Jensen's weird organic worlds and Cecilia Őmalm Krajcikova's big detailed black and white digital prints.
Over at David Risley, I'm enchanted by two groups of work by Eri Itoi. His tiny drawings depict funny little people, who are simultaneously sad, cute and absurd: one has a chicken on its head, another some kind of fish. These are exquisitely detailed works and one seems to see beautiful intriguing worlds in the deft tangle of garments and limbs and things.
Eri Itoi, 'Musuesan-ha-koduku-no-rei-n', pencil on paper
There's cool cut-out work by Maximo Gonzalez: Untitled, 2008 is a kind of little spindly paper tree made out of 'cut developed money paper' upon which are printed what look like fallen totem heads. I also like Richard Galpin's Free State II – it just seems to work better than some of the other works I've seen by him in the past.
At Mother's Tankstation, Dublin, (amazing name!) I love David Sherry's short story Great meals I've never had, in which he tries to pay for a meal that he hasn't actually ordered or eaten. It's so warm, funny and touching, silly and subversive. Similarly charming is Gonzalo Lebrija's Lamento, a small cream porcelain figure leaning against a corner on the floor of Laurent Godin, Paris: it's sweet and sad and full of diminutive melancholy.
Riflemaker is dominated by a big Gavin Turk print and a huge canvas by Francesca Lowe. In this mad world of imaginary future, two women fall backwards towards the viewer, one clutching some kind of sphere. Out of this priceless orb emanate jets of magical multi-coloured energy, which cause havoc with the surrounding technological constructions. It's a grand work, and rich with complex narrative.
After all this, I'm beginning to tire and the Film and Video Room provides a welcome relief: it's dark and you can sit down. Deborah Ligorio's portentous Il Sono examines the latent power of Mount Vesuvius, Victoria Bernie's Coire is slow and painstakingly beautiful, Ruth Maclennan's Capital talks of an imagined future metropolis with both humour and fear, whilst Katie Paterson's rhythmic Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull deserves more space than I have here. (Read more about it on her website).
In short, Zoo Art Fair is a triumph. It's fun and challenging and has a bit of everything. Plus it's not so rammed that you can't find a quiet contemplative place just to sit. After a relentless week of art fair traipsing, Zoo is, thankfully, a charming combination of energy and calm.
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