Interview

It's a sunny week in London, without rains, without chills, and still, for a few days at least, without Frieze. (LEFT: THREE COLOR CURL (2008), WALEAD BESHTY)

Before the main fair preview Wednesday, before even the major gallery previews Tuesday, there is Monday–in the US a holiday that signifies the beginning of the end of British world dominance, so perhaps a time when London should take stock of itself. The economy seems to have settled (thanks surely to the re-payment of Gordon Brown's $20,000 in expenses) and dealers seem reservedly upbeat. As the typically quiet Frieze founder Matthew Slotower would say on this night, "You can't sell just anything, like you might have two years ago. You've got to bring something good... or you're dead." Giddy London, indeed.

En route to the charity auction for GRAFF auction for FACET (For Africa's Children Every Time: fairly self-explanatory in it's intentions), at Christie's, we fell onto Walead Beshty's show at Thomas Dane. There the gallerist was happy to explain the exhibition, which consists of the artist's signature abstract photographs in bright if rather industrial colors rendered through a complicated magnetic procedure, but also copper boxes that the artist ships to the gallery and in some cases stacks, once there. The boxes (Beshty showed glass versions at the last Tate Triennial) bear every mark of their transfer from the studio (or the fabricator's, as it were) to the gallery: that means packing tape and shipping labels, and oxidization every time the box is touched, primarily in the form of fingerprints. Was FedEx freaked out by the shipping order? "They were, but they'll take anything," explained Dane, and we'll take his word for it.

See our full Frieze diary on Art in America.