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It’s official – Art14 rocks. You just had to step inside the throng of buyers, dealers and artists all bopping their way into the main hall at Olympia to the sound of happy house to feel it. Everyone was there. With Pearl Lam Galleries taking pride of place right next to the Fine Art Society at the entrance it was clear that this was the International art fair of the year. Sponsored by Citi Private Bank Art14 showcased 182 galleries from 42 countries, presenting both modern and contemporary art in a price range that is attractive to first time buyers and big time collectors alike.
What’s more Art14’s commitment to staging works by established and emerging international artists gave the fair a unique design theme, with 24 projects in a range of media weaved into the fabric of its very user-friendly layout. Everything about this fair celebrates and encourages the discovery of talent. Zhao Zhao’s bloody red Waterfall installation, presented by the Alexander Ochs Gallery, dramatically recreated the Chinese Emperor’s throne then doused it in dripping red wax was sensational. Ramould Hazoume’s Rat Singer, Second only to God presented by the October Gallery – a canoe partially submerged in concentric circles of petrol cans was grotesquely compelling. Pearl Lam Galleries’ Cannonball Heaven by Yinka Shonibare was hilariously dark.
Meanwhile galleries such as Maddox Arts pulled out all the stops to give us a real taste of Latin American talent, such as Miler Lagos’ delicate newspaper mandalas set opposite a wall of erotic miniature drawings that you could look at through a magnifying glass. Forging ahead at the Fine Art Society is the fabulous head of contemporary Kate Bryan who is championing a generation of already collectable talent that will be considered masters for centuries to come. A selection from Annie Kevan’s Women and the History of Art is possibly her best series to date, while Chris Levine’s Geometry of Truth pulsing like a door to the future in its linen booth that tried to contain all its laser magic, was arguably the best in show. What I wouldn’t give to see that scaled up.
So much of the work at Art14 was instantly covetable – and there was a complete absence of the fearful trepidation that the more established art fairs can induce in the less seasoned collector. There in its midst I found my very own talisman for this decade, a piece that seems to represent all the possibilities contained in the 14th year of the 21st century. Syzygy by Mat Chivers shown at the Millennium Gallery stand, and first seen at the Venice Biennale, is a brilliant illustration of the rough and the smooth – our growing awareness of nature’s fragile bounty in tandem to our capacity to discover and innovate through science. A hand carved block of Spanish Alabaster shaped like a cumulus cloud balances precariously upright opposite the geometric smooth faced solid darkness of Indian Black Granite on its side. Proportionally equivalent but substantially reversed these two sculptures work in “syzygy” to create the perfectly balanced vision … something everyone was drawn to.
Were these two shapes opposites? Not at all. The translucent alabaster cloud was carved intuitively from memory. The Indian Black granite anti-cloud was in fact created through a digital scanning of its “analogue” sister. This process uses millions of triangles to interpret the surface volume, which Chivers then reduces to a visible number forming a polyhedron. A milling machine then creates a mirror polished form of the computer rendered geometry – the absurd articulation of a cumulus cloud set in stone.
Presently commissioned to create a central piece for the new Mathematical Institute built by Rafael Vinoly at Oxford University, his work somehow contains and projects the duality of modern existence and our need to embrace technology without shattering our connection to the natural world or terminating our ability to escape into it. It seemed to punctuate the show itself and all who came into contact with it, just as Levine’s Geometry of Truth at the Fine Art Society recalibrated my perception. Somehow the quote I later found on the Millennium Gallery’s website seemed to touch on the intangible magic of Art14’s success:
“The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, whilst simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.” Steve Grand from Creation: Life and How to Make it.
by Nico Kos Earle