Queues are an established British tradition, but the line to enter Frieze London’s VIP day on Thursday, October 15th, may have taken things a little too far, stretching well away from its signature white tent. Thankfully, spirits were cheerful in Regent’s Park, where crisp autumn foliage and even crisper outfits created a scene of anticipation and excitement that extended well into the fair itself.
This year, Frieze returns to its home turf with more than 280 exhibitors between its two venues in the park: Frieze London is the stomping ground for cutting-edge contemporary art, while Frieze Masters, a good 15-minute walk away, focuses its lens on art historical works.
This year’s fairs arrive at an odd moment for the London art scene, perhaps mirroring the current moment in Britain. On the one hand, consumer confidence continues to slump, and economic anxieties abound in the country at large—a sentiment that its art market is not immune to. But on the other hand, there is a palpable energy in the city’s art scene that was immediately evident from the start of the week. Emerging and longstanding galleries mounted exceptional shows, as did London’s artist-led projects and spaces, institutions, and, of course, its constellation of art fairs.
Frieze represented the meeting point of all this excitement, bringing the full heft of the British art scene as well as international clout, with galleries from some 45 countries represented.
“London has always been a place where rigorous artistic dialogue thrives, and the fair brings together a truly international network of collectors, curators, and institutions,” said Mohammed Hafiz, cofounder of ATHR, which is showing at the fair for the second time. “At a moment when the market feels more deliberate and thoughtful, Frieze offers a meaningful platform to build lasting relationships and situate artists’ work within broader cultural contexts.”
With its two fairs, Frieze is uniquely positioned to showcase this breadth. While Frieze Masters shows the depth and quality of historical interest London attracts, Frieze London embodies its contemporary dynamism. This youthful experimentation was particularly evident in the fair’s Focus section, which hosts galleries under 10 years old.
London’s art scene has, in recent years, been compared to that of Paris, which, of course, will have its own art fair moment courtesy of Art Basel Paris next week. Yet there are very few art fairs that offer the true diversity that Frieze does, and this fact was not lost on its first-time exhibitors.
“Frieze has a well-established reputation for its thoughtful presentations and curatorial rigor,” said Stefano di Paola, director at New York and L.A. gallery Anat Ebgi, which is making its Frieze London debut. “We are so pleased to be a part of that and introduce our program to the London audience, a city we haven’t done a fair in in nearly 10 years.”
The gallery, which is showing a dual presentation of works by Robert Russell and An Te Liu, noted that it had made a “number of sales” on the opening day and reflected a broad optimism among exhibitors. Many dealers reported strong collector engagement across categories and price points, with reported transactions led by Hauser & Wirth’s sale of Gabriele Münter’s Der blaue Garten (Mein Gartentor) [The Blue Garden (My Garden Gate)] (1909) for CHF 2.4 million ($3.01 million) at Frieze Masters. Read Artsy’s first day sales roundup here, and check back on Monday for our full sales report.
Here, we share our 10 best booths from Frieze London and Frieze Masters 2025.
Simões de Assis
Frieze London, booth S8
With works by Diambe
Simões de Assis’s presentation is within the new curated section Echoes of the Present, selected by curator Jareh Das to reflect the artistic exchange between Africa, Brazil, and diasporic communities. The Brazilian gallery’s presentation focuses on the artist Diambe, whose paintings of fantastical landscapes and unique bronze sculptures evoke the natural materials of their homeland.
Their twisting, stem-like sculptures, for instance, are crafted first in beeswax and allowed to melt in the sweltering São Paulo heat before being cast in bronze. The young Brazilian artist then adorns the works with fruits, such as the star-shaped carambola, which lend a local, natural flair. According to Diambe, who was present at the booth, these pieces are “about the transformation of this material and also how it’s witnessing climate change.”
Capricorn , 2025
Diambe
Simões de Assis
Carambola e milágrimas II, 2025
Diambe
Simões de Assis
Teto com Estrela Cadente, 202592
Diambe
Simões de Assis
Come together , 2025
Diambe
Simões de Assis
Devoção, 2025
Diambe
Simões de Assis
Their small, vivid paintings, meanwhile, are made with egg tempera, a fast-drying paint that requires the artist to paint each section in small flicks of colored dashes, as if tiled. Capricorn (2025), for instance, reveals a glowing blue mountain peak through a dark cave-like viewpoint. Diambe noted that the technique also helps to preserve the color, which is layered into vibrant swatches in these landscapes.
—Josie Thaddeus-Johns
Ben Brown Fine Arts
Frieze Masters, booth E13
With works by Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Frank Auerbach, Miquel Barceló, Tony Bevan, Alighiero Boetti, Lucio Fontana, Candida Höfer, Robert Indiana, Heinz Mack, Nabil Nahas, Shirin Neshat, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gavin Turk, Victor Vasarely, and Andy Warhol
If there were any doubts about the continued excitement around Les Lalanne, visitors to Ben Brown Fine Arts’s lively booth would quickly extinguish them. The gallery dedicates half of its presentation to the late in-demand designers, centered on a flock of whimsical, life-sized François-Xavier Lalanne sheep sculptures installed atop some turf.
“I’ve got this flock of sheep that I’m selling individually, but I thought that it’d be wonderful for people to see it collectively,” said gallery founder Ben Brown. “Given that almost nobody sees them on a lawn, we thought we would do this mound, and I think it’s been extremely successful.”
Nouveaux Moutons (Brebis), 1994/1997
François-Xavier Lalanne
Ben Brown Fine Arts
Croco Seat, 2007/2018
Claude Lalanne
Ben Brown Fine Arts
One Dollar Bill (Back), 1962
Andy Warhol
Ben Brown Fine Arts
Mano Libera Pensieri Sciolti, 1981
Alighiero Boetti
Ben Brown Fine Arts
The sheep, which are priced individually between €500,000 and €600,000 ($583,202–$699,843), are surrounded by objects by Claude Lalanne—chairs, tables, benches—that each embody the duo’s unique fusion of Surrealism, nature-inspired design, and functional sculpture. “They’ve got bigger and bigger, and the prices have continued to rise, which is rather justifiable and wonderful,” noted Brown of the late duo's ongoing market ascent.
In the other half of the gallery’s booth, there is an assortment of exemplary works by 20th-century heavyweights, including Andy Warhol and Alighiero Boetti.
—Arun Kakar
OMR
Frieze London, booth A26
With works by Matti Braun, Pia Camil, Julian Charrière, Claudia Comte, Jose Dávila, Pablo Dávila, Dalton Gata, Candida Höfer, Alicja Kwade, Ana Montiel, Jorge Méndez Blake, Alberto Perera, Gabriel Rico, Adolfo Riestra, Eduardo Sarabia, Sebastian Silva, Troika
On first glance, the walls of OMR’s booth appear to be covered with pale red toile patterns—decorative pastoral scenes against a white background that have traditionally been held as a signal of “good taste.”
As viewers move closer, however, the wallpaper’s subversive intent becomes clear. Provocative scenes from contemporary life are depicted: tiny, detailed cartoons of podcasting porn stars and playful, perverse devil figures. “It’s a perverted mess of things happening, but it looks like traditional wallpaper,” said gallery owner Cristobal Riestra of the pen-drawing artwork by Alberto Perera.
Jing (marble cactus), 2025
Claudia Comte
OMR
Calavera en bacinica, 1970
Adolfo Riestra
OMR
Cuerpas, 2025
Pia Camil
OMR
The Endless January of 2025, 2025
Dalton Gata
OMR
The Mexico City–based gallerist called this presentation an “everything all at once” booth. The presentation is filled with a range of wall works in a salon-style hang alongside Brâncuși-esque, cactus-shaped marble sculptures on tall pedestals by Claudia Comte. Some works on the wall are small, and, like Perera’s work, are also X-rated, such as a dark pastel work of a masturbating nun by Adolfo Riestra and Pia Camil’s 2025 painting of naked bodies intertwining. Others are much more imposing, like Candida Höfer’s large-format photograph of a majestic empty theater, or a massive abstract painting by Sebastián Silva that was gaining a lot of attention on the fair’s opening day. For Riestra, it’s a chance to bring the 18th-century exhibition style back to Europe: “This is where it all started,” he said. Prices were as diverse as the works, ranging from $6,000 to $150,000.
—J.T.J.
Vadehra Art Gallery
Frieze Masters, booth G8
With works by Anju Dodiya
For its booth in the Studio section of the fair, New Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery presents a suite of psychologically charged paintings and drawings by Anju Dodiya. The section of the fair is dedicated to solo presentations of living artists, and the artist’s introspective and poetic practice is well worth exploration: The booth also features ephemera that informs Dodiya’s practice, such as records, books, and postcards.
Created between the early 2000s through to this year, the works here depict women protagonists or alter egos in sparse domestic or stage-like interiors. In vast fabric works using watercolor and charcoal, softly depicted interior scenes draw on influences from Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock printing, frescoes, and print media. The mood in each painting moves between vulnerability, discipline, and flashes of violence or anxiety. “She talks about the angst of being an artist and a creative person, and the angst of being in a studio,” said gallery director Parul Vadehra. “That’s a theme that she’s worked through over the years, between the older and the newer works.”
Arachne and the Pearl, 2025
Anju Dodiya
Vadehra Art Gallery
A Measure of Happiness, 2025
Anju Dodiya
Vadehra Art Gallery
Studio Fragment (3), 2004–2024
Anju Dodiya
Vadehra Art Gallery
Studio Fragment (9), 2020–2024
Anju Dodiya
Vadehra Art Gallery
Of particular note are a series of “fragment” works. These drawings taken from the artist’s studio archive feel like witnessing miniature dramas—tight, surgically edited images where the restraint of the artist’s clean drawing style and thin washes of paint heighten the sense of tension. These works start at £3,000 ($4,016) and prices range up to £37,000 ($49,532).
—A.K.
Timothy Taylor
Frieze London, booth C14
With works by Daniel Crews-Chubb
British artist Daniel Crews-Chubb is known for his gestural, large-scale paintings: exuberant colors and impasto textures created with a mix of media. Several of his latest imposing works are on view at the London and New York gallery Timothy Taylor’s booth, like the almost three-meter-tall Out of Chaos XIII (Red) (2025), which depicts three hulking nude figures. Scratched out in charcoal on a raw canvas, the figures are rubbed, sploshed, and splashed with paint, ink, and other collaged elements to create a pink-red work that the artist sees as representing an extension of himself.
Out of Chaos XIII (Red), 2025
Daniel Crews-Chubb
Timothy Taylor
Guardian II (Teal and Pink), 2025
Daniel Crews-Chubb
Timothy Taylor
Dismantled Figure III, 2025
Daniel Crews-Chubb
Timothy Taylor
Guardian III (Pink), 2025
Daniel Crews-Chubb
Timothy Taylor
Mask XIII, 2025
Daniel Crews-Chubb
Timothy Taylor
Crews-Chubb also sees himself reflected in his new series of sculptures, which mark the first time he’s worked in three dimensions. These works are made out of wooden tree trunks and covered in plaster and paint to create monstrous statues. Guardian II (Teal and Pink) (2025), for instance, is a one-armed figure, thick with chunky acrylic paint, with the ridges of the tough bark still visible underneath. Crews-Chubb’s distinctive Abstract Expressionist painting style is visible in both formats. Prices range between $70,000 and $90,000.
—J.T.J.
Thomsen Gallery
Frieze Masters, booth C06
With works by Itō Kinsen, Tanabe Chikuunsai, Maeda Chikubōsai, Kidō Shunpō, and Iizuka Rōkansai
New York’s Thomsen Gallery attracted the attention of passersby on VIP day with its ornate arrangement of 20th-century Japanese baskets. Used for traditional Japanese Ikebana flower arrangements, the intricate woven baskets on view here each frame the natural beauty of stems, leaves, and blossoms while maintaining visual balance and restraint. The vertical structure of the basket guides the lines of these traditional flower compositions, emphasizing asymmetry and negative space while mirroring the principles of the Ikebana tradition.
“They are all made with simple materials of bamboo and rattan, yet have extraordinary breadth of style and details and designs,” said gallery founder Erik Thomsen of the vases, which range in price from $5,000 to $10,000.
Parallel-Line Rectangular Flower Basket (T-5008), ca 1992
Suemura Shōbun
Thomsen Gallery
Flower Basket (T-4913), ca 2005
Morigami Jin
Thomsen Gallery
Chrysanthemums (T-4659), 18th Century
Unknown Artist (Japan)
Thomsen Gallery
Splayed Handled Flower Basket in Hexagonal Plaiting (T-4847), 1960s
Ueda Shounsai
Thomsen Gallery
Hagi Tea Bowl (T-1513), Edo Period (1615, 1868), 19th Century
Unknown Artist (Japan)
Thomsen Gallery
The gallery, which specializes in Japanese art, also brings to its booth a selection of standout folding screens dating between the 18th and the 20th century and a cluster of small tea bowls, historically used to present tea powders during traditional tea ceremonies. These latter items are priced from $4,000 to $6,000.
—A.K.
White Cube
Frieze London, booth D21
With works by Marguerite Humeau, Howardena Pindell, and Sara Flores
Three women artists of different generations consider the wonder of the cosmos in White Cube’s booth. American artist Howardena Pindell (whom the gallery began representing last year) exhibits recent works in her classic dotted style. Deep Sea #2 (2024) depicts the dark of the ocean in stunning swirls of blue and green dots. Meanwhile, the large work Night Flight (2024) stitches together different segments of the canvas in a bright blue, covered in paper dots that evoke the microscopic elements of our world.
Peruvian artist Sara Flores, who will represent the South American nation at the Venice Biennale in 2026, is also interested in the reciprocal systems that make up our natural world. She is one of the most respected working practitioners of Kené: ancient, intricate drawings that are traditional in the Indigenous Shipibo-Konibo community. The textile works in White Cube’s booth are hand-drawn using traditional natural dyes and intertwine geometric patterns adorned with leaves and flowers.
Deep Sea #2, 2024
Howardena Pindell
White Cube
Night Flight, 2024
Howardena Pindell
White Cube
Black Spirit, A female human of an unknown age has ingested a Tasmanian devil's brain, 2018
Marguerite Humeau
White Cube
Untitled (Shao Pei Maya Kené, 2024), 2024
Sara Flores
White Cube
Tesseract #21, 2024
Howardena Pindell
White Cube
Coeur de Marie, A relationship that you can’t get out of your head, that is still somehow alive, unfinished. It has become a mythical place, an abandoned campsite in your mental landscape. Inspired by the Bleeding Heart, the plant extract traditionally given to the brokenhearted and the codependent, as it is made of two fused flowers, each being half of a heart., 2022
Marguerite Humeau
White Cube
Untitled (Pei Maya Kené, 2025), 2025
Sara Flores
White Cube
The booth’s final artist is Marguerite Humeau, the youngest of the trio, whose series of “Venus” sculptures is on view. These works are inspired by research showing that ancient cultures studied, or even ate, animal brains to create their relics. The small black alabaster statue Black Spirit, A female human of an unknown age has ingested a Tasmanian devil’s brain (2018), for instance, represents both a female figure and the furrowed ridges of a brain: weird and intriguing in equal measure. Pindell’s works are each priced between $200,000 and $875,000, Humeau’s between £65,000 ($87,080) and £200,000 ($267,940), and Flores’s between $65,000 and $125,000.
—J.T.J.
Berry Campbell
Frieze Masters, booth S20
With works by Janice Biala
Dedicated to overlooked artists from the 20th century, the Spotlight section of Frieze Masters is a natural fit for Berry Campbell. The New York gallery has developed a formidable reputation for championing neglected artists from the period, and here it showcases a series of outstanding paintings by the late Polish American painter Janice Biala, who passed away in 2000.
These lyrical, quietly powerful paintings deftly bridge the worlds of Parisian modernism and New York abstraction, schools from two cities where she spent much of her working life. Works on view here depict interiors, still lifes, cityscapes, and figures, and, taken together, balance expressive gesture with compositional restraint. Biala’s work reflects a synthesis of the postwar School of Paris’s sensitivity to form and tone with the boldness of Abstract Expressionism, yet these paintings are uniquely hers: intimate, poetic, and attuned to the relationship between color and shape.
White Still Life, 1951
Janice Biala
Berry Campbell Gallery
Three Figures (Trois personnages: Parmenia Ekstrom, Merlet, J. F. Jaeger), 1952-1953
Janice Biala
Berry Campbell Gallery
Boulevard de Clichy, 1947 -55
Janice Biala
Berry Campbell Gallery
Nature morte au cremier Louis XVI, 1952
Janice Biala
Berry Campbell Gallery
“We love her whole body of work, from the 1930s all the way to the ’90s—it’s incredible,” said gallery owner Christine Berry. “We decided to bring her to London, because we felt like this subject was very European and has a great connection to what’s happening over here. People are interested in women from this time period, and her sensibility is a mix of European and American.” Works at the booth are priced from $20,000 to $100,000.
—A.K.
Taka Ishii Gallery
Frieze London, booth B30
With works by Shota Nakamura, Hiroka Yamashita, and Goro Kakei
Hiroka Yamashita’s paintings, based on animist Japanese philosophy, are the stars of the show at Tokyo gallery Taka Ishii’s booth, which presents works by three Japanese artists. Nature and humans melt into one another in Yamashita’s flowing, heartfelt paintings. One, entitled Waterfall (2025), is inspired by the Japanese myth of the waterfall god slaying an eight-headed snake and using water to cleanse his sword. White and blue paint whooshes down the canvas, echoing both the waterfall and the mythological scene.
In another, Divided Water Lilies (2025), green lily pads float nonchalantly on a pond, evoking the natural calm of the rural utopia of western Japan where Yamashita is based.
On the outer wall of the gallery’s booth hangs a painting by Shota Nakamura, a Berlin-based painter and alum of the Artsy Vanguard 2023–24. In the moody gray-blues that characterize the artist’s current show at the gallery’s Tokyo space, Nakamura portrays a figure waiting at a table in a cold interior landscape to evoke an in-between moment of pause.
On a shelf, meanwhile, are a dozen miniature sculptures by the late artist Goro Kakei, each priced in the low four figures. From the bronze, Giacometti-esque figures that mirror his larger works to the paper he began sculpting with when he was no longer able to handle heavier metals, these works are like little collectible toys, experimental and playful.
—J.T.J.
Loeve&Co
Frieze Masters, booth S21
With works by Robert Coutelas
French artist Robert Coutelas resisted easy classification with a broad practice that combined elements of folk art, medieval illumination, Surrealist symbolism, and outsider art while never belonging fully to any. Born and based in Paris until his passing in 1985, he led a life often marked by material hardship and deliberate distance from the art world, choosing artistic solitude over commercial success.
Covering the walls of Paris gallery Loeve&Co’s booth is a collection of the artist’s tarot-card-sized “Mes Nuits” works on cardboard. These small works feature several recurring motifs rendered in a style both humorous and eerie, including haunting figures, spirals, vegetal forms, and faces that evoke human and animal characteristics. “He created around 3,000 of these, and there are a lot of symbols and influences,” said gallery director Jules Vannier. “He never showed anything to anyone until 1967, when he started doing this series.”
Mes Nuits, ca. 1970
Robert Coutelas
Loeve&Co
Mes Nuits, ca. 1970
Robert Coutelas
Loeve&Co
Untitled (Ancestor Portrait), 1978
Robert Coutelas
Loeve&Co
Mes Nuits, ca. 1970
Robert Coutelas
Loeve&Co
Mes Nuits, ca. 1978
Robert Coutelas
Loeve&Co
Mes Nuits (Composition of 24 Cards), 1973
Robert Coutelas
Loeve&Co
Untitled (Melancholy Sunshine), ca. 1965
Robert Coutelas
Loeve&Co
In spite of his marginal position during his lifetime, Coutelas has in more recent years been rediscovered through exhibitions in France, Japan, and elsewhere. This booth marks the artist’s first solo show in the U.K. and also features larger paintings that draw on stylizations of medieval iconography and modernist abstraction. Works at the booth are priced from £1,400 ($1,872) to £62,000 ($82,918).
—A.K.
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