The experts' guide to the Frieze

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Chantal Joffe with her canvases

An example of Michael Landy's work which shows

Andro Wekua speaks out strongly with his collages and artwork

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With 250 artists on show, navigating London's most exciting art fair is daunting. We asked the professionals who they would be looking for...

CHARLES SAATCHI
Collector

If you had to choose whether the Chapman brothers, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and the other Sensation artists would win an eye-gouging, head-butting, no-holds-barred street fight with the USA Today artists, you'd have to back the Brits. They're tougher, more direct, more brutal, and crueler. But the Americans at Frieze have more elegance, more guile, and a wider range of moves. So Jules de Balincourt (shown at the fair by Arndt & Partner), Kristin Baker (ACME), Terence Koh (Peres Projects), and Josephine Meckseper (Arndt & Partner) may end up with a points win, and the Muhammad Ali award for floating like butterflies and stinging like bees.
(USA Today: New American Art from The Saatchi Gallery is at the Royal Academy of Arts until 4 November.)
Expect to pay: painter and sculptor Jules de Balincourt's work has changed hands for up to £400,000.

FRANK COHEN
Collector and gallery owner; known as the "Saatchi of the North"

Right from the early days of my collecting, going back 30 years, I have been interested in painting. My favourites this year range from the well established Christopher Wool's (Art & Public Cabinet PH) brilliant abstract oddities , right through to the rapidly emerging Anslem Reyle's (Andersen_s Contemporary) vibrant, abstract paintings and sculptures. I love Jack Pierson (Taka Ishii Gallery) who examines middle-America with an unflinching eye; and Andro Wekua (Andro Gladstone Gallery), who speaks out strongly with his collages and artwork, delving into his traumatic childhood for inspiration. As far as the new breed of Chinese artists are concerned, one of my favourites is Yan Pei-Ming (Art & Public - Cabinet P.H.), whose monumental, monochromatic images have influenced other young Chinese painters.I have no problem accommodating artists like the fantastic Rudolf Stingel (Galleria Massimo de Carlo) who looks for the beauty in industrial material, beside the luscious sensuality of Cecily Brown (Gagosian) and the cool hyper-real portraits of the Karel Funk (303 Gallery). It'll be a busy Frieze.
Expect to pay: Chinese art is hot at the moment; a Mao by Yan Pei-Ming is estimated at £120,000.

KADEE ROBBINS
Art dealer and curator based in London and New York

I'm going to be seeking out the work of Michael Landy (shown at the fair by Thomas Dane). Best known for his large-scale installations and performance pieces, he also does beautiful, intimate works on paper. Sometimes simple, sometimes elaborate, they are always intriguing and visually compelling.
Landy took part in the 1988 Freeze exhibition (curated by Damien Hirst) which launched so many of the YBAs. I really first became aware of his work over a decade later through his 2001 performance piece, Breakdown. Landy made a meticulous inventory of his all possessions, from postcards and cutlery to furniture and his car. Then, over a two-week period he destroyed every one in a disused C&A store on Oxford Street. I love its commentary on modern consumerism. Landy's works on paper have the same defiant spirit but are on a more personal scale and it is always interesting to see what subject he's taken on next.
Expect to pay: Michael Landy drawings have reached between £8,000-£15,000 at auction.

JUDITH GREER
Co-author of Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector's Handbook

Keep an eye out for Tabaimo (Gallery Koyanagi). Illustrated in the Frieze Yearbook is one of her exquisite, often haunting, ink-on-Japanese-paper drawings. I have been hearing about her over the past few years but only saw a major work at the Margolis collection in Miami last December. It was an installation piece - three walls of floor-to-ceiling projected animation recreating a room in a Japanese bathhouse where a young man zips off his skin, one layer after another, in preparation for his bath. The details were all realistically Japanese in a traditional woodblock-print style, very old-fashioned in feeling but unsettling in the blurring of the serene and the surreal. I love her economy of means, her often sly references and the way her art reminds me of the dangers lurking in daily life, in our comfortable existence, and in our convictions of who we are and what it is that makes us so.
Expect to pay: Tabaimo's lithographs sell for over £10,000.

ALISTAIR HICKS
Art adviser to Deutsche Bank

Last year, the director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Iwona Blazwick, gave an informative lecture saying that many of the strongest artists today are interested in fantasy, fiction and creating their own worlds, not as escapism but as a satirical comment on the way we live. Our recent purchases support this - fantastic drawings by Yehudit Sasportas (Yehudit Gallery) and photographs by Ori Gersht (CRG Gallery). We tend to buy drawings, photographs and prints with accessible and stimulating ideas. I know gallery owner Peter Kilchmann is taking some Melanie Smith to Frieze, but not works on paper, and Arndt & Partner similarly is taking a Jules de Balincourt canvas, yet no drawings. But Frieze, like the Deutsche Bank Collection, is only the tip of an iceberg. If one forgets the shopping-list mentality, there is a whole wealth of artists out there.
Expect to pay: photography is a good way to start collecting; an Ori Gersht would price at about £6,000 per photograph.

ROBERT HISCOX
Owner of the Hiscox Collection

If you're after an intriguing painter, look no further than Cecily Brown (Gagosian Gallery). Painterly expressionism on a grand scale has been deeply unfashionable among galleries' new blood for some time. But when the genuine article comes along, such as with Cecily's work, audiences instantly engage - expressionism, after all, is at the heart of our instincts. She's at Frieze again this year, although I think all her pieces have, sadly, already been sold. We had the good fortune to acquire a work from her last show at Gagosian called Maids Day Off. It's a fantastic addition to our collection. Her confidence is beguiling and I love its organised chaos. You think you glimpse some reality then it is obscured; the effect is sensational.
Expect to pay: her large series High Society 1997-1998 sold for £520,000 last year. Before that, pieces typically went for around £54,000.

STEVE LAZARIDES
Gallery owner, agent to Banksy

I was particularly pleased to see Scott King (Herald Street Gallery) in the Frieze Yearbook. Graphics-based, full of slogans and sly social comment, his work really stands out. King worked as art director on i-D magazine in the Nineties. He did a great magazine for a while called CRASH!, which was funded by Turner Prize-winning photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. They put up a billboard advert near King's Cross, covered in subversive slogans. He also produced one of my favourite-ever magazine covers for Sleazenation, called Pink Cher, which superimposed Cher's face on the iconic image of Che Guevara. You don't need to be a serious art collector to get it. I appreciate art that everybody can understand, which is why I like working with people such as Banksy and Jamie Hewlitt. It's bold, simple and funny. Ultimately, the first rule of collecting is to pick stuff that you like. That way if the price goes down, you're still pleased to have it on your wall.
Expect to pay: £1,500-£5,000 for a Scott-King print edition.

KATE JONES
Collector and framemaker

Chantal Joffe (Victoria Miro Gallery) produces figurative paintings, drawings and collages, depicting slightly vacant looking women in a variety of guises. Her style is fluid and bold and she has an incredible ability to create presence and character with minimal brush strokes. I've been an admirer of her work for a number of years - it's got to the point where I can't get her work out of my head. I feel the time is right to invest in a piece. Unfortunately our budget won't stretch to one of her huge painted canvases (and I don't have a wall big enough!), but I hope to find a smaller painting.
Expect to pay: she hasn't come up much at auction yet but her stock is rising fast. About £7,000 is a low-end estimation; much more for larger pieces.

Frieze Art Fair Yearbook 2006-7: An Insiders' Guide to Contemporary Art is published by Frieze (£16.95). Frieze Art Fair (0870 890 0514) is open to the public daily Thursday to Sunday, 11am-7pm (Sunday, 11am-6pm).

 

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