Frieze London 2025 Explores The Beautiful World Of Modern Art
The frieze art fair for 2025 was as busy as ever this year. The breadth of galleries showed how art is far more global than ever. It also highlighted just how far art has come since the birth of the camera. Yet since the presentation of Marcel Duchamp‘s urinal, The Fountain, a porcelain urinal he signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt” in 1917 and submitted to an art exhibition shown as a “readymade, we know anything can be art. But how relevant is this statement still? Frieze London 2025 Explores The Beautiful World Of Modern Art
Image on left, a drawing that calms you just by looking at it | apple pencil sketch, 2025 Oil, acrylic, and graphite on linen 54 × 45 in / 137.2 × 114.3 cm by Mika Horibuchi at 56 Henry
This year saw the great and good of the global art world descend on London’s Regent’s Park for the annual Frieze exhibition. London may be the home of Frieze, but there is a new exhibition coming soon to Seoul in 2025.
Key trends at Frieze 2025
On show were a lot of versions highlighting materiality with an emphasis on textiles, clay, and intricate craftsmanship. Installations were littered across the site, especially in the section dedicated to emerging galleries. Alongside this, there was a push for greater sustainability and collaborations between the art, design, and fashion industries
Modern Art London
This season saw the widening scope beyond the traditional Western vision, with significant representation from South Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and by doing so challenged the long-held belief that art history is purely a Western concept.
But one gallery stood tall amongst so many others, not just for the boldness of the presentation, which came with a total lack of colour. But the sheer audaciousness of presenting three walls of pencil drawings of apples.
Mika Horibuchi
The presentation from Mika Horibuchi, represented by 56 Henry Gallery NYC, was a sight to literally stop viewers in their tracks, so bold was the idea. All three walls of the space were dotted with different pencil drawings and studies, if you like, of apples. From big to small, some with water drips, some framed, some not, some on creamy white, some on soft tonal beiges, creams and mocha-toned papers.
Mika Horibuchi
Apple Artwork
This was the most arresting of stands. With colour, texture, and size playing a huge role across the whole event, it was quite remarkable to see a selection of ‘simple’ pencil-drawn apples. A fruit synonymous with so much across not just the history of art, from the time we learn to draw to its symbolism.
There is the classroom, where students start secondary art classes, and one of the first items taught is the drawing of the apple. This simple fruit, such a great for practice in the fundamentals of drawing, shading, and noticing form. Their simple, rounded shape helps beginners learn to create a three-dimensional form, while their curves and shadows are perfect for practising light and shadow techniques without the complexity of more intricate subjects. Yet there is more…
Artists have used the apple to study and represent form, colour, and light. Paul Cézanne, in particular, used apples repeatedly in his still lifes to challenge artistic conventions and explore new ways of depicting a subject from multiple perspectives.
They also, of course, have rich symbolism representing themes like temptation, knowledge, love, death, and fertility. They appear in ancient myths and religious stories. From the Garden of Eden onwards, they symbolise both the continuation of life and death.
The artist explained that whilst working on a different project, she felt stuck and so went back, if you like, to go forward. The simple idea of studying the apple as a tool as a way to relook, question and re-answer the same point. What is the purpose of Art?
Going back to go forward seemed to be the expression of the day for this artist, who was born in 1991, San Francisco, CA. and now lives and works in Chicago, IL. Just like any form of practice, an exercise, the process opens each person up to newness. new thinking, now observations not just of say, the apple in this case, but of their workings, their thinking, their expression. But what struck the most was the ability of the artist to lay herself bare, to expose her working world at one of the biggest and most renowned art fairs in the world. And that single act made the works even more remarkable.
The plethora of distinct materials and styles crossed the whole exhibition, from interactive works to others that seemed intensely personal.
Shafei Xia Sailing in the Mirror
Shafei Xia creates work that is playful, provocative, erotic, and meticulously refined. With inspiration coming from Japanese shunga and 19th-century Chinese erotic paintings. On show were themes of love, desire, jealousy, and violence.
Alex Margo Arden’s presentation, ‘By All Accounts’, a crowd of male mannequins, salvaged from the National Motor Museum, were bound together in a coiled tug-of-war rope, in an almost frightened-looking huddle of male workers.
“Daily Departmental Accident Record” is a 2025 oil on linen painting by artist Alex Margo Arden at Ginny on Fredericks
The installation on the wall next to it Accounts (2025), also nods to record keeping, as a record of how ‘good’ we are in our past working world. As if these men and these records have no longer any value. The presentation was the recipient of two awards, granted by the Arts Council Collection and the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation.
Nicole Wermers Reclining Female, at Herald Street gallery
Artist Nicole Wermers mixes sculptures, photographs and collages, connecting formal considerations with a discussion about urban space and its social, economic and psychological aspects, whilst configuring familiar objects into new material forms. Combining references to art history with modern surfaces and materials, the artist explores fine art aesthetics within the design of daily life.
This location of the art fair includes the Frieze, London, Frieze Masters and the Sculpture Park. But all over the city, there are numerous related events, including talks, gallery openings, and other performances.
Around the city, exhibitions included, a major retrospective of ceramic pieces by Suffolk-based artist, Boris Aldridge (b.1974) took place at Amir Mohtashemi Ltd. The solo exhibition, comprised of 55 works, showcases Aldridge’s single-minded approach to his favoured art form, beautifully decorated tiles in the tradition of Medieval Persian lustreware.
Richard Saltoun Gallery presented Unveiled Desires: Fetish & The Erotic in Surrealism, 1924–Today. A two-part exhibition curated by Maudji Mendel of RAW (Rediscovering Art by Women), a private collection and curatorial initiative dedicated to recovering the work of overlooked women artists of the twentieth century.
Pierre Molinier, Sur le pavois, planche 26 du Chaman [On the Shield, plate 26 of The Shaman], 1968-1970
Opening during Frieze Week, the exhibition forms part of the gallery’s six-month programme dedicated to Surrealism and traces more than a century of artistic engagements with eroticism by female and queer artists across painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture.
Cian Daywrit (b. 1989, Manila, Philippines) used his first UK solo exhibition to unpack what he calls ‘the infrastructure of corruption for infrastructure corruption’, providing the Philippines as a microcosm example to spell out the mechanics of the Global South as it is today.
Cian Dayrit, Fever Dreams of Progress – Green Rev. Embroidery, objects and digital print on fabric, Copperfield London.
Across the tapestries are images from the 1930s Journal of Public Works, which details infrastructure projects in the Philippines. In these conditions, if a wanted extraction, taking a wealth of minerals or oil from under a forest, a town or an indigenous community, money will have allowed this to happen. Displacing communities and breaking ground without ever needing to commit culpable violence.
The Rosewood London announced a series of creative activations in celebration of the city’s prestigious art fair, Frieze. Deeply connected to London’s dynamic and diverse communities, the hotel welcomed the discovery of emerging creatives and the stories found at the intersection of art, culture and dining. Through its grand Edwardian courtyard, Rosewood London continues to evolve as a platform for contemporary art, transforming its architectural heritage into a stage for expression and exploration.
This year’s highlights include exclusive culinary experiences and a major residency by London-based artist Rose Electra Harris, whose vibrant aesthetic was on show across key areas of the property.
Finally, over at 45 Jermyn St, there was a launch of an exclusive collaboration with renowned Madrid-born artist and designer Jaime Hayon, to coincide with London Frieze Week. Hayon’s awnings design echoed the energy and creativity of both the restaurant and the surrounding galleries, and marks a natural progression from his previous window displays with Fortnum & Mason.
The restaurant is celebrating its 10th year of service with Hayon’s bespoke restaurant awnings, alongside a limited-edition cocktail menu and chocolates to match, from 10th October until early 2026.
Art its eanbing and evne where it can be presented has changed beyond all boundaries. As much as art can be anything, it can also be everywhere.
If you enjoyed reading Frieze London 2025 Explores The Beautiful World Of Modern Art, then why not read The Whispered Pop Song here
Follow us:
