The Frieze art fairs in London and New York are the reference points for the brave new world of contemporary art: at once ground-breaking and commercial, edgy and established, and a badge of honour for the galleries selected to sell there. Frieze co-founder Matthew Slotover talks to LUX Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai about digital art, the future of culture, and new developments.
Matthew Slotover
Matthew Slotover is the co-founder of Frieze art fair in London and New York, and is fast becoming one of the art world?s éminences grises. Although that?s probably a misnomer for this boyish-looking 48-year-old who looks as insouciant as he did the day he and Amanda Sharp founded Frieze magazine in 1991, soon after they had left Oxford University. Their art fair ? the slightly less brash, slightly more cerebral, but just as influential, alternative to Art Basel ? is still the most desirable place for the world?s biggest gallerists, collectors, and their armies of hangers-on, to display and purchase.
Slotover and Sharp have resisted the impulse to roll out their brand around the world. Founded in 2003 in a tent in London, Frieze only opened in its second venue, in New York, in 2012. This year, a quarter of a century after the specialist art magazine that spawned the fairs was founded, they took on some outside investment, for the first time, from the sports and entertainment agency WME-IMG ? behind Slotover?s innocent facade and genuine love of the new in art is as tough a busine...