Photo by Stephen White, courtesy the artist and White Cube, London

White Cube sold Rachel Kneebone's "Stations" (2007) for a reported £200,000 ($327,000).

Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Jim Hodges "The Dark Gate" (2008). Wood, steel, electric light and perfume. 96 x 96 x 96 in.

Jim Hodges Terence Koh Raqib Shaw David LaChapelle One Sweet Pajama Party Live from Italy, It’s Artissima The Best of Intentions A Paper Ball

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

White Cube’s massive booth was also filled with action. One American collector was seen with his art consultant examining Raqib Shaw's Mild-Eyed Melancholy of the Lotus Eaters II (2009), made of enamel, rhinestone and glitter on paper. As those two debated pound to dollar conversions, two buyers on the other side of the booth tried to convince the gallery’s director to lower the price. Business seemed brisk, and a Rachel Kneebone porcelain called Stations (2007) went for £200,000 ($327,000).

Not far away, Stephen Friedman Gallery had priced Jim Hodges’s impressive installation, The Dark Gate, at $750,000. The cavernous work covered the booth in darkness, daring buyers to enter. Venturing inside, one could find a single bulb illuminating two doors that opened onto a large wooden cube. When ARTINFO made the journey inside that box, two English women were found remarking that they felt they were in a family sauna. Hodge’s work differs from most saunas though: the sides of his box are made of large steel spikes that surround the perimeter and jut out to the center with sharp spikes. There's a real sense of endless depth when you look at its middle — like a Lee Bontecou work — but then you can walk around the work from the outside and it looks completely different.

Young and well-connected gallerist Alex Dellal, founder of 20 Hoxton Square Projects, also opened a group show yesterday at the former Sierra Leone embassy, which has become one of London's hottest photo shoot locations, at 33 Portland Place. Anouck Lepere and Jefferson Hack arrived, as did Valentino: a high profile crowd.

The works inside ranged from the OK — Terence Koh's decapitated head, alongside a film reel of fascist leaders by Marco Brambilla — to interesting. Highlights in the latter category included Lawrence Owen's painting, Alastair Mackie's mud model of the U.S. Capitol building in D.C., and a boxing ring (featuring real blood from soldiers, Dellal told ARTINFO) by Michael Lisle-Taylor, who was also responsible for military uniforms that had been reconfigured into straightjackets.

Hugo Wilson's sculptures depicting the pulmonary cycle of lungs and heart at emotional moments (love, shock, etc.) were the most interesting works on display. Wilson created them by preserving the lungs and heart of a deer (quite similar to the human versions of those organs, apparently) and cast them in resin. They looked orderly, yet chaotic and delicate.

Other highlights at 33 Portland Place included Olympia Scarry's bra portraits and apocalyptic paintings and drawings by Wolfe von Lenkiewicz. One of von Lenkiewicone’s large-scale paintings featured an American eagle with Jesus's face, carrying Abraham Lincoln on his back, while it flew over a burning landscape — a biblical scene on the left and, on the right, a depiction of New York on September 11, 2001, with the Flatiron Building visible and the Twin Towers in flames — very in-your-face work. He threw all his punches.

Marina Cashdan is Executive Editor of Modern Painters.

See all of ARTINFO's Frieze-related coverage here.