REFLECTIONS after visiting the Frieze Art Fair 2024, but it's actually just me having a hard time with penguins.
I know I said I wouldn't write a review about Frieze this year, but I developed a passionate situationship with one artwork that I saw there - presented by the PALACE ENTERPRISE gallery, The birds (2017) by Benedikte Bjerre, but most probably it was actually by Amazon or Temu but we will get to that in a second.
I am sure that you've already seen that work before, as it was the most Instagramable piece from the whole fair. Funny, hypocritical, ridiculously expensive so, of course, immediately after entering the fair, my friends and I went to see this piece. We took some pictures and left.
When I got back home, I read the text about this artwork on the gallery's website. This sentence should get the first prize for the "Most Sophisticated Curatorial Text": Combining analytical shrewdness with keen wit and spatial aptitude, Bjerre's work relates to the sculptural legacies of modernism in her investigation of popular culture, mass consumerism, and their consequences in looming shadow of the Anthropocene." We have everything here!
Using sophisticated language CHECK
Referring to art history CHECK
Using names that the reader has to google to make them feel stupid because they should know them CHECK
Putting simple words together in such a way that one has to read them several times to realise that they don't understand any of it at all CHECK
My friend messaged me later" This language is so deeply ingrained in what's expected of curatorial text etc that it's weird if they didn't write like that." well yeah but do we plan to cultivate such language for ever? Many of us have problem with what art fairs represent and do, so perhaps it is important to tell curators/gallerists that the person who bought this artwork had to read that text 293847247204 times and still didn't understand it.
Another sentence in the text about the work started with" The penguins are readymades…" straight away activating my detective mode.
Of course, when you buy an artwork, you don't pay only for materials. You pay for the artist's idea, time, creativity, education, reputation and so on. But when a gallery sells 3 editions of 125 plastic penguins balloons for £48k (58k euro) each that the artist probably bought at Temu for £99.25, someone will say "hey hey ho ho WHAT?" And this person will be me. A lot of art is bullshit, and there are a lot of artworks that are about this bullshit (I like the second type). But is there a limit to how much you can play with people for money? History shows us that there isn't, but there definitely should be.
Later on, they also referred to Hitchcock's horror film, but I lost the plot.
I saw this work on Instagram at least 30 times, but every single article I read about it is a catastrophe. The annoying trick many magazines and newspapers do is they don't include authors' names on their websites. So I don't even know who thought it was a good idea to add this conversation to the artwork's context: "The penguins may also remind us of the queer couple in an Australian zoo," said a gallery spokesperson, highlighting the love story of Sphen and Magic, two male gentoo penguins in Sydney who raised two chicks together. Bless." Like…what?
Frieze Fair + Cute Balloons + Hitchcock + Reflection on Climate Change + Penguin Gay Couple… it does not add up.
Then I saw in someone's story that the gallery was giving away penguins from the stand for free at the end of the last day of the fair. So what were they? Props of the artwork? If I had known they were going to give them away, I would have stood in front of the tent and done the same with the ones I bought on Amazon. If I say that my penguins would be an artwork as well, what would be the difference? I'm throwing all these cheeky questions at you as I like such conversations ;)
As you can see, I went slightly too deep into my situationship with the birds artwork.
Guess who bought 125 plastic penguins balloons at Temu for £99.25
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