Frieze Bites

Spotted around London this week
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

What We Like

At Dominique Lévy
Gerhard Richter’s Sänger. Now this, from 1965, is something worth writing home about. On one side of this canvas, which sticks out of the wall like something from a surrealist painting, bears on one side one of the blurry, photographic images that Richter specialised in during the early ‘60s. The other shows the first of his divisive colour charts, a red number. As with everything in this show, it’s a necessary work – both for Richter to have made and for us to see. However, unlike the other, more polished paintings here, it also reveals something about this notoriously difficult artist’s working process.

At Luxembourg & Dayan
Alighiero Boetti, Seguire il filo del discorso. Quotation marks hang in the deep blue air like dandelion spores. You feel as though you’re picking up the back end of a dozen competing conversations. The azure biro stitching that covers all four panels is mesmerising, minimal and, most importantly, delightfully silly. This might be the most immediate Boetti work I’ve ever seen, and it makes me extremely covetous.

At Sotheby’s
Highlights from the Sotheby’s New York Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale have winged their way across the Atlantic. That means you can go and see Van Gogh’s Paysage sous un ciel mouvementé, terrific works by James Ensor, and Picasso’s La Gommeuse in London this week. The latter is a Blue Period, strangely hunched – even coy – nude. Go and see these paintings while you can. And see if you can find the Dürer drawing tucked away in a corner – it’s a treat.

At Gagosian, Britannia Street
New paintings by Jonas Wood. The vast interiors are the best things here: strangely surreal spaces, their planes of acrylic oddly textureless and appearing almost as collages.

What We’ve Seen

Gilles Peterson DJing to a room of Pistoletto mirrors and Auerbach paintings at a packed Sotheby’s party. The mirror did not, fortunately, crack from side to side…

Larry Gagosian scrutinising the labels of Camden Pale Ale at his gallery in King’s Cross. It’s locally sourced liquor, Larry!

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5