Frieze is taking place this week, bringing art to every gallery, church, warehouse and a good chunk of Regent's Park. Alongside Frieze, the city also hosts Frieze Masters, Frieze Focus for artists old and new, and Frieze Sculpture.
Our pick of the fair is below, along with our choice of the wider shows and events taking place elsewhere. Even more so than other years, art fever has taken a grip, and amid all the buying, posing, gossiping and champagne-breath, there is plenty of incredible art to discover.
Highlights at the Frieze Fair
The Artist-to-Artist series at Frieze features solo presentations by emerging talents nominated by an established artist. Eilen Itzel do Espírito Santo, an Afro-Dominican American artist nominated by Firelei Báez, presents a dazzling set of new paintings, works on paper and clay based on stories from West Africa's Yoruba people.
Selma Selman's works on scrap metal at acb Gallery Budapest are disturbing, abstracted self-portraits that act as a diary of everyday life in Bosnia and late-capitalism. This is part of a section at the fair called The Code Universe, which shows how artists have addressed the post-digital era.
Brazilian artist Dalton Paula at Lisson London presents a new set of paintings, aiming to restore visibility to black historical figures from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Theo Triantafyllidis at The Breeder offers a huge Cronenberg-esque gaming sculpture that visitors have to climb aboard and play together on. Triantafyllidis is the first Greek artist to win the Frieze Artist Award.
More Must-See Presentations
Ana Mendieta's excellent retrospective at the Tate Modern is complemented at Frieze with a series called Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants). In these images from 1972, the late Cuban-American artist glues her friend's beard to her face in a typically striking and fearless questioning of gender norms.
Kara Walker at Spruth Magers presents a new series of large ink and watercolour cut-paper works called The Second Thanksgiving, dealing with issues of race, power, violence and oppression. Thomas J Price at Hauser & Wirth presents Through a Steady Gaze, marble works depicting real-life people to posit questions of who we venerate.
Kira Freije, nominated for this year's Turner Prize, features casts of her own arms in her Gestures series at Frieze. Ella Fleck at Ehrlich Steinburg poses as a man and underwent training to be an OnlyFans "chatter"; her installation here conjures up the mechanics and feeling of this world.
Exhibitions Beyond Frieze
There are many other exhibitions timed to coincide with Frieze week. Maria Kreyn's Dream Logic at The Swiss Church in Covent Garden is a striking series of works by the American artist, rather like a melding of Turner and Dalí. Mira Schor at Mimosa House traces her career from the early years as part of a pioneering feminist art movement to her current standing as a revered educator.
This first showing of Fernando Botero's work in London for a decade is a triumphant selection of his distinctive work, where the abundance of his form works as both social critique and fleshly celebration. Art is Freedom will be presented at Marble Arch, London Bridge station, St Pancras International, Piccadilly Lights, Trafalgar Square and Aldwych, featuring artworks by survivors of modern slavery.
Amsterdam duo DRIFT's interactive installation called Aeoulus at Carpenters Workshop Gallery takes the form of hundreds of glass rods that respond to the movement of the audience. Lucy Dodd at Sprüth Magers traces her move from New York to the Moray Coast in Scotland, with works that incorporate materials from her new surroundings. Niovi Kafantari at Opera Gallery presents her first solo exhibition, called The Necessary Other.
