Art Fairs as Chess Games: Frieze and Paris+
Tell me where you are and I tell you who you are. Few elements of an art fair are more important than booth size and location. But while a gallery can give a preference on booth size, they cannot choose their location. Being positioned opposite the toilets or at the end of a corridor, rather than near the entrance, at the exit of a VIP lounge, or in the central square, offers neither the same prestige nor the same number of visitors. Location is based on decisions made by the fair organizers. When the iconic New York dealer Leo Castelli returned to FIAC (Paris) in 1990 after a 15-year absence, it was no coincidence that his stand was positioned at the heart of the central aisle, close to the fair entrance. Similarly, the mega-gallery Gagosian has occupied the same position at Frieze (London), opposite the entrance to the fair, since at least 2008. An intriguing case is that of the Almine Rech gallery, which despite its many branches around the world, including one in London, has been able to move from its less central position to getting closer to the heart of the fair at Frieze. However, recently, it was one of the few international galleries to be removed by Art Basel’s Paris+, which has replaced the FIAC since 2022, from its previous position in the central square to a less prominent position. These few examples show just how complex the rules governing a gallery’s position at an art fair can be. Location matters a lot to visitors and therefore potential clients, as numerous studies in behavioral psychology on visitor behaviour in commercial and museum environments have shown: the propensity to make appointments at the entrance, the tendency to head to the right, the loss of attention as the visit progresses, and so on. Frieze and Paris+ take place in October. What can we learn from the way these two fairs position galleries?
A REAL HEADACHE
As a commercial springboard, art fairs across the world offer the prospect of significant financial and reputational gains, leading galleries to compete fiercely for access to the most selective. Paris+, for example, received over 700 applications for the 2023 edition for 154 places, while Frieze London say they usually have three times as many applications as spaces.The consequences of a possible rejection are not insignificant: loss of new markets and reputational damage. A rejection is tantamount to calling into question—rightly or wrongly—the quality of the gallerist’s work. However, even after acceptance the gamble is not over. The key issue remains the booth location. Galleries only find out about their location a few months before the fair. As for the public, it is not until the opening of the show that they can access a fair map. This can be justified by practical considerations—there is no need to distribute a map before visitors have a chance to use it—but also by more strategic issues. “There can be last-minute withdrawals, up to a week before the show. We don’t position just any exhibitor alongside another, which can lead to 2 or 3 other galleries being moved, as positions are subject to a subtle balancing act. It’s a real headache,” says Henri Jobbé Duval regarding FIAC (former general curator of FIAC and Art Paris). Organizing space equitably is no easy task. Whether held in permanent buildings and convention centers, or in temporary marquee structures, some areas will be more favorable than others. Even when fairs are of a reasonable size, such as Frieze or Paris+ (at the moment), with about 160 exhibitors. Housed in the Grand Palais Ephemère on the Champ de Mars, Paris+ offers a space split in two, in the shape of an invertedT. After exploring the transept at the entrance, where the most powerful galleries are located, visitors enter a narrower nave with an airlock in the middle that opens onto an endless corridor of smaller stands, reminiscent of the layout in IKEA stores.This is where one finds smaller and younger galleries. But how many visitors cross the threshold into the corridor after having spent time and energy visiting the central area? Assuming they dutifully visited the previous stands, at the rate of two minutes per stop, they will have already spent three hours tramping through the fair. In London, Frieze is housed in a “tent” in Regent’s Park. As at Paris+, the structure is not in one piece: three adjacent spaces are connected. The first is for the powerful galleries. A ramp and a slight rise in level accentuate the separation between the central space and the one to its right, where the stands are smaller. The large size of the space can be confusing to visitors, as many corridors give many options, in difference to Paris+. In both fairs, the resulting physical fatigue is compounded by a loss of attention— the famous “museum fatigue” coined in 1916 by Benjamin Ives Gilman, curator of the Boston Museum. Of course, not everyone is unconscientious. The more informed know what they want to see and are certainly more selective, but also more inclined to make new connections, which slows down their progress through the fair.
CLUSTERING
Fairs seek to circumvent the problem of spatial inequity by organizing dedicated zones, so that visitors can quickly find their way to the area that interests them.The Frieze Focus section, for example, brings together circa 35 galleries under the age of 12, presenting solo shows or curated stands. Color-coded differences on the fair maps help visitors find their way to these special sections. This type of grouping serves visitors who have a good a priori knowledge of what they are looking for. In Paris, Philippe Joppin, cofounder of the High Art gallery, who joined the main FIAC after participating in the young galleries sector, points out: “Beyond the location, it’s the context that makes the difference. I clearly saw a change in the visitors when we went downstairs to the Salon d’Honneur, where there was a mix of upand-coming and slightly older galleries. It’s important to be surrounded by galleries that are like us, where collectors will find a particular profile of galleries and artists.” While this clustering of galleries has given them a more or less established audience, it does not encourage new discoveries. Some rare initiatives have gone against the grain of fairs organized in “hierarchical” zones, such as the ABC Berlin fair, which, when it was launched in 1996, distributed stands in alphabetical order. The experiment didn’t last long, however.
Both fairs are remarkably homogeneous in their approach to the most powerful galleries. In 2022, eighteen of the galleries positioned in the central square of Paris+ were also present at Frieze and, remarkably, sixteen of them were also positioned in its central zone. Only two, notably Galerie Perrotin, were positioned off-center. This fact is indicative of the differences in policy between
the two fairs. While both fairs accept similar percentages of galleries from their respective territories, Frieze is very generous to British galleries in terms of location: 40% of the total stands in the central square are occupied by London galleries, while no French gallery is included in this first block. Even young galleries are given prominence, such as Carlos/Ishikawa located between Sadie Coles HQ and Ester Schipper.The proportion of French galleries in the fair is generally low. At the same time, German and American galleries are out in force. For their part, the French fairs—Paris+ and, before it, FIAC— show no favoritism for French galleries, which are vastly under-represented in the fair’s most prominent sectors relative to foreign galleries, particularly American. 38% of the galleries represented in the central square have their head offices in the USA— Gagosian, Gladstone, Paula Cooper, Pace, Zwirner, etc.—while their overall proportion within the fair is only 17%. A similar phenomenon occurs for British and German galleries, whose representation in the central square is much higher than at the fair in general. French galleries tend to have more peripheral positions at the Paris fairs. Their presence in the sectors closest to the entrance to the fair—the central square—and then in the nave surrounding it, is only 13% and 27% respectively, lower than their overall representation in the fair.
The concentration of a small group of international galleries in the top spots reflects an ambiguous relationship: galleries flock to participate in fairs that are themselves gallery-dependent, their quality measured by the number of galleries that attend. The fact that powerful galleries such as 303 Gallery, Marian Goodman, Gladstone, and Regen Projects have swapped Frieze London in recent years to concentrate on FIAC/Paris+ may, in the medium term, damage the image of the London fair.The two international fairs, out of fear that powerful galleries will fail them grant them the most envied positions, even though if they were dispersed throughout the fair, their draw would lead visitors to head for their spot, with the possibility of discovering a few lesserknown galleries along the way. This suggestion was once put forward by gallerist Georges-Philippe Vallois, then President of the CPGA (Comité Professionnel des Galeries d’Art), but he acknowledged the difficulties of implementing it.
Most smaller galleries, on the other hand, have no power. Many of them flock to the fair gates and end up in distant places with hope of one day reaching a more central position. The London fair does, however, allow a few young galleries such as Arcadia Missa and Project Native Informant to get closer to the center by sharing a space, and gives some preferential treatment to young, hip French galleries, such as High Art or Crevecoeur. But, as the general high age of galleries in the best-exhibited areas shows, it is not easy to progress from one sector to another. When FIAC was replaced by Paris+, and many changes were made, none of the 24 galleries in the central square left the fair. More than half the galleries in the central nave of Paris+ are over 20 years old. Only two galleries are less than 10 years old: Nahmad Contemporary and LGDR, although both are the offshoots of people who have been dealing in art for many years. To find younger or smaller galleries, you have to go further back in the fair. It is also only towards the back at Paris+ and the right side of Frieze that we find a real geographical diversity of exhibitors. Frieze and Paris+ boast galleries from many different countries—42 for Frieze and 34 for Paris+—but this number often arises often due to the presence of a single gallery from a geographic area, and these galleries are not evenly positioned at the fair. In the most remote sector of Frieze, in 2022, 17 different nationalities came from just 36 galleries, while at Paris+ there were 12 nationalities from 23 galleries. Fairs like to claim diversity, but often place it at the periphery. But being far away from the center often doesn’t work: distant zones are those with the highest turnover rates. Between 2016 and 2019, both fairs had a 50% turnover rate in these zones.
PAWNS
One conclusion can be drawn from this exploration: a small number of international galleries are favored by both fairs. Beyond that, Frieze and Paris+ do not necessarily have the same selection and location priorities—especially in relation to national galleries—except that the stands of young galleries, which are often the most innovative, are located far from the entrance. In fact, they will only be visited by the most assiduous and well-informed visitors. “Strollers” will often not reach them. The situation of the galleries in the large middle of the fair is rather random, and they may or may not be lucky. But in the end, they all are pawns in a big chess game.
nStephanie Dieckvoss is a German art historian based in London. She currently works as an independent lecturer, writer, researcher and journalist and specialises in contemporary art markets.
Nathalie Moureau is a professor of economics at the University Paul Valéry in Montpellier and a researcher in the RiRRA 21 lab. She has coauthored with Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux Le Marché de l’art contemporain (La Découverte, 2016).