An artist's guide to Frieze

In pictures: Frieze Art Fair 2009 private view

But even if you don't have a spare €2 million for a noisy Sigmar Polke, Frieze is a great excuse to window shop and people-watch.

But where to start? We asked Michael Elmgreen - who, with Ingar Dragset, forms the conceptual artist partnership Elmgreen & Dragset - to take the temperature of this year's Frieze and pick his top 10 highlights.

"Frieze is one of the better art fairs," Elmgreen said.

"They commission artists, they have the sculpture garden, and brilliant lectures. People can learn something.

"I also like it that Frieze has become a big attraction for normal people. It's a place where you can sniff the contemporary cultural mood, both by looking at people's dress-code, and at the art."

Elmgreen & Dragset's own contribution includes Walking Man Who Doesn't Walk, a pastiche of a Giacometti sculpture, weighed down with a ball and chain.

"It's the art world after the credit crunch. There's no more walking around!" But, actually, Elmgreen thinks the recession has been good for the art world.

"It was insane two years ago. Back then it was like: what is most mediated, most expensive, most exposed and most glittering is best. Then suddenly the situation changed.

"It was too tough last year when everyone panicked and no one would buy any art. But I think it's a better time now. It was good to have a bit of a shock and now have things moving at a more normal pace."

John Baldessari
Beethoven's Trumpet
(With Ear) Opus #133
$400,000, Spruth Magers
"Baldessari has a show at Tate Modern at the moment and has been an avant-garde great for many years. The older he gets, the funnier he becomes.

Many artists are more fun at the beginning of their careers, but Baldessari keeps up the energy. Things that are overly serious at art fairs often turn out to be a bit pathetic.

Artworks that play in different ways, by being artworks — and being in context — are the things that survive best."

Stephanie Syjuco
Copystand
From £99
"Stephanie is making replicas of the works at the fair, and they will be cheap. That's my style, and I love it. And they have Yason Banal's Andy Warhol on their stand! There has to be something that you can look at for free."

Wolfgang Tillmans
Suzanne, No Bra
11,000, Maureen Paley

"The photographer's model, Susanna, is a pop star who made one hit, called Munchhausen, about lying, and big salaries - just like the art world. Tillmans has been really significant in shaping a new gay identity in the media, from a camp, kitschy stereotype to showing gay men with alternative lifestyles. Throughout the Nineties, his books were important for a whole generation of men who were growing up looking at his images and saying: 'Wow, I'm homosexual, but I can see that I'm not so different.'"

Sigmar Polke
With Potemkin Through The Villages
2 million
$350,000
Both Michael Werner Gallery

"These are two of the grand old men. I don't know what this Polke is doing here, as it's far too significant a piece to be shown at an art fair. Polke has been an important German artist for many decades. I'm normally not too keen on paintings, but he is one of the few artists who have ideas-based working methods, instead of just creating something pretty. Byars was a conceptual minimalist - he has not been overly exposed but he did great work for many years. I like these pieces together - it looks like a big golden pixellated dot has fallen out of the painting."

Christoph Buchel
Socks
20,000, Hauser & Wirth
"Ten years ago, one of the first pieces Ingar and I did - because we had very little money to make sculptures - was to take off our underwear and jeans and dump them in the gallery - that was the sculpture. It became so popular that we made it an edition, and wealthy people around the world have had us dropping our jeans and pants, and it's a sculpture because they lie on the floor. So, I love these socks."

Ugo Rondinone
A Day Like This Made Of Nothing And Nothing Else
$350,000, Galerie Eva Presenhuber

"It's a strong piece, and this is a great display. I'm not sure if the planks are the gallery floor or part of it ... Ugo Rondinone had a show at Whitechapel a few years ago. He has made trees before - it's funny in relation to Regent's Park outside. You can see the real trees from the cafeteria, and you have the artificial one here."

Duane Hanson
Man With Camera
$550,000, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin
"He's blending in quite well. You get surprised by this man because he's one of the few people at the fair who looks ordinary. When you walk around Frieze you think, 'Oh, I can relate to that guy because he has a human dress-code.' You feel so happy, and then you find out that he's a sculpture. I like Duane Hanson - he pays homage to ordinary people."

Sebastian Diaz Morales
The way Between Two Points (Terra Incognita)
24,000, Galerie Catherine Bastide
"I'm not sure I would have noticed this video work in another context. Its slow narrative means you have to concentrate in order to get an art experience. Here is the opportunity to sit down and get your thoughts together before you are attacked again by all the displays saying 'buy me, buy me, buy me'. My recommendation is, when your head is too filled with noise and there is horrible light outside, that it's a good place to pause and get yourself together."

Henrik Olesen
Untitled
8,000, Galerie Daniel Buchholz
"Henrik is a friend of mine, he has an excellent show in Studio Voltaire in Clapham which is very different from Frieze, because it's only visited by people who are really interested in art. This piece is everything an art fair piece shouldn't be, and therefore I love it. It's serious, and it's not screaming 'buy me'. Henrik Olesen has very traumatic relationships with his family. I can relate to that because I left mine when I was 16."

Gail's Artisan Bakery
(cappuccino £2.50, glass of champagne £9)
"The café at Frieze is another kind of artwork. You can eavesdrop on what people are saying. You get an idea of what the audience, not the buyers, think."

Dynamic duo
Scandinavian artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset met in 1995, and have established themselves as a younger-generation Gilbert & George, collaborating on conceptual pieces that are funny, unsettling, and occasionally moving. Notable works include siting a Prada boutique in the West Texas desert in 2005, and curating the Danish and Nordic Pavilions at this year's Venice Biennale.

In 2008, their memorial to the gay victims of the Nazis was unveiled in Berlin. Next week, their theatrical work Drama Queens (performed last year at the Old Vic), opens at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. "It's a play with seven modernist sculptures - mechanical replicas that can drive around - on a theatre stage, bitching at each other. The figures include Giacometti and Jeff Koons, Barbara Hepworth and an Andy Warhol Brillo Box that doesn't say anything."

Previously based in Berlin, Elmgreen moved to London last year. "All the gold-diggers left London last year. It's more fun to go out, and people don't speak so much about how much they sell work for. I like this atmosphere, where you have to think about new ways to do things."

In pictures: Frieze Art Fair 2009 private view