Every October, an art circus comes to town and parks itself on 436,000 square feet of green in London’s Regent Park.
Inside the gigantic white tent, Eva Langret, the artistic director of Frieze London since 2019, plays ringmaster, sparking conversations during the international creative display and leaving guests wanting more.
The annual art fair is also a major moment on the social calendar, with the likes of royalty, athletes, designers, Hollywood bigwigs and politicians in attendance.
Over the years the VIP preview has hosted Princess Beatrice of York and her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi; Rishi Sunak, Britain’s former prime minister; Maria Sharapova; Jared Leto, and Raf Simons.
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This year, the VIPs and others will certainly have an eyeful — and not just from the contemporary creations on display. The fair’s drastic makeover features full-frame windows meant to showcase the art to the wider public.
“It’s Botox time,” Langret jokes in her French accent.
The fair’s updated layout is designed for visitors to experience all galleries effortlessly — without having to depend on a map or a mobile phone. New, square seating blocks will allow for moments of rest and conversation.
When guests check in, they will be welcomed by two solo presentations, this year themed around global energy. One is from Danielle Dean, from New York-based gallery 47 Canal, and another from Indian gallery Experimenter.
“[Frieze London] is that one moment in the calendar where everything comes together. There is no other time or place where you’re going to see 160 galleries come together and showcase the best [work] that their artists have made in the last year,” says Langret, who says she has always loved London.
The born-and-bred Parisian studied economics at Paris’ Dauphine University before doing a master’s degree in art history at SOAS University of London.
After graduation, she took on a few small internships at Parisian art galleries, but her eyes were set on London because “at the time, it felt really diverse, open and global in a way that Paris wasn’t for me growing up,” she says.
Langret’s first job was at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, a public art gallery based near Brixton that provides a platform for Afro-Caribbean and Asian artists.
It was at her gallery job that she got to experience Frieze London for the first time in 2006.
“My boss kindly offered to pay for my ticket. I was blown away by the sheer scope of everything, it didn’t feel like a trade show, it was more of a festival and a gathering of creative minds — and that really sticks with you,” Langret says.
This year’s global energy theme takes inspiration from London’s cultural melting pot and the heat of international exchange, she says.
This year’s exhibiting galleries will include 80M2 Livia Benavides from Lima, Peru, which specializes in Latin American conceptual art; Greek gallery The Breeder, based in Athens, and Egypt’s Gypsum gallery from Cairo, which counts the politically provocative Basim Magdy as one of its artists.
“The fair is very much about opening ourselves up to new geographies of art and including those who have not been part of the discourse yet. London is a place where everyone from all over the world, including myself, come to study art, become curators, experiment and find their way into the art world — it’s really important that the fair reflects this,” Langret says.
The mood reflects the 60th Venice Biennale, themed “Foreigners Everywhere.”
In Venice, the British artist and writer John Akomfrah is presenting his work “Listening All Night to the Rain,” which was commissioned by the British Council. It focuses on ideas of memory, migration, racial injustice and climate change.
Langret wants that same conversation to occur at Frieze London, and beyond the borders of the city.
To wit, Pablo José Ramírez, a curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, has been invited to work on a special section at the fair that looks at non-Western history, and at ceramics made by Indigenous people.
Langret, a stylish woman whose penchant for structured tailoring and colorful trousers has landed her on best-dressed lists, says the fair has become more international over the years, and its increasingly global outlook has been paying dividends.
In 2012, the fair added a New York edition to its roster, followed by a Frieze Los Angeles in 2019 and Frieze Soul in 2022. In doing so, Frieze has been able to spotlight artists from the past who were overlooked and educate its annual visitors of more than 60,000 during its five-day spectacle.
In the last four years Frieze London has strengthened ties with the wave of new galleries and launched the Artist-to-Artist program, where renowned artists choose young artists from all corners of the world for solo presentations at the fair.
“Even though we’re a business with a commercial platform, we don’t forget that we come from a magazine that’s rooted in art criticism and our relationship with artists,” she says.
This year’s lineup includes Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom, chosen by Glenn Ligon; Rob Davis by Rashid Johnson; Nengi Omuku by Yinka Shonibare; Massinissa Selmani by Zineb Sedira; Magda Stawarska by Lubaina Himid, and Peter Uka by Hurvin Anderson.
“I love how decentralized and globalized [the art world] feels at the moment and with [Frieze London] I’m always discovering new artists and galleries in some parts of the world that maybe I haven’t been to yet, and that I want to go to in the next few months,” Langret says.
The fair’s 20th anniversary edition last year reported robust numbers despite macroeconomic challenges and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and expectations remain high.
In 2023, commercial highlights included a standing bronze and stainless-steel sculpture by the French American artist Louise Bourgeois, which sold for $3 million; a sculpture by Louise Nevelson, which sold for $2 million, and a painting by the German artist Georg Baselitz, which went for 1.2 million euros.