Thursday, May 2, 2024

The Best Booths at Frieze New York 2024 https://ift.tt/lCd2XIG

Returning to The Shed in Hudson Yards for the fourth time, Frieze New York’s 12th edition was greeted by warm weather and a healthy throng of VIPs that poured into the venue for the VIP opening on Wednesday. This year’s fair takes place at the front end of a fortnight of art world events in New York—a shift from 2023, when it was the last art fair of the crowded May season. With Future Fair and 1:54 also opening their preview days on Wednesday and situated within a 10-minute walk of The Shed, Chelsea was turned into an art fair hotspot, with salutations and tote bags permeating the neighborhood across the day.

The fair is also now one of two annual touchpoints that Frieze oversees in New York, following its acquisition of The Armory Show, which takes place in September. How the company will influence the shape of that fair remains to be seen, but this year’s Frieze New York bears many similarities with its previous edition. Galleries once again broadly prioritized newer works over historical pieces, and the 68 galleries exhibiting represents the same total as last year. Celebrities in attendance included David Byrne, Michael Bloomberg, Chelsea Clinton, Anderson Cooper, Thelma Golden, and Kesha.

As the first major art fair since the Venice Biennale, this year’s fair features a palpable sense of that major international event’s impact on the commercial art world. Artists participating in Venice presentations—including many artists from the Global South—had a strong presence across the fair. The typically Frieze-y suite of household names were in full force, as usual, many of which yielded the most notable sales from the event. Collector interest across the fair was tangible, with a number of six-figure transactions reported.

“The opening day of Frieze New York so far has really shown the continued strength of the American market,” noted gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac. “It has been great to see such strong attendance for the preview, especially among U.S. collectors.”

Some of the top reported sales from the VIP day included the following:

Check back on Monday for Artsy’s full digest of reported sales. Here, we present our 10 favorite booths from Frieze New York 2024.


Stephen Friedman Gallery

Booth B18

With works by Holly Hendry

It’s rare that British artist Holly Hendry makes work that fits in the domestic space. Her solo booth with Stephen Friedman Gallery closely follows two massive public commissions in the United Kingdom: one at the Hayward Gallery and another installed at London’s Temple tube station. That said, the booth’s striking centerpiece, Weather Vein (2024)—an abstract sculpture evocative of internal organs, made from jesmonite, glass, steel, timber, leader, and paint—is around nine feet long. The works are priced at £6,500–£25,000 ($8,100–$31,300) per piece.

“This work is about bodily expectations or aspiration…in a way that relates vaguely to performing womanhood,” Hendry told Artsy. The large-scale sculpture is accompanied by 16 wall works depicting disembodied tongues, ears, bones, and other corporeal shapes. These works play with expectations of bodily autonomy, with titles such as Hormone and Peristalsis (all 2024).

Peristalsis, 2024
Holly Hendry
Stephen Friedman Gallery

Hormones, 2024
Holly Hendry
Stephen Friedman Gallery

“We wanted to do something completely different in terms of scale,” said director Jon Horrocks. “It’s a continuation of how she looks at the body in a very, very unique way. It’s a very comical, absurd perspective. We’ve always been likening the wall-based works to portraits. She’s revealing how, in her mind, internal processes work, so some of the names are like Blush.”

By the end of the day, the gallery had sold out the wall-based works, primarily to new collectors who were previously unfamiliar with Hendry’s work. “It’s been a revelation for her—really great exposure,” said gallery founder Stephen Friedman. “The energy, the buzz, has been really amazing all afternoon.”

—Maxwell Rabb


Kukje Gallery

Booth B16

With works by Haegue Yang

South Korean powerhouse Kukje Gallery’s booth in the corner of Frieze’s main section is a quietly dazzling display. Dedicated to a series of paper collages by Haegue Yang, the presentation features eight works hung within wooden structures, and accompanied by detailed explanatory texts, lending the feel of walking into a museum rather than a fair booth.

Yang’s intricate, delicate works are composed of traditional Korean hanji paper made from the inner bark of a mulberry tree, along with other types of mulberry paper, including Japanese washi and Chinese chupizhi. Each piece demands attention: Elements of figuration and anthropomorphism emerge upon closer inspection, as does the artist’s complex use of layering and attention to detail.

The works—priced from €27,000–€35,000 ($28,930–$37,500) apiece—are a part of Yang’s “Mesmerising Mesh” series, which began in 2021, and embody the artist’s ongoing investigation into the myriad paper traditions relating to spiritual and folk rituals. This exploration has taken the artist from traditions of Korean Shamanism to Judaism through to practices found in the Philippines and India, to name a few. “Yang thinks it’s very important to explain these kinds of traditions in different cultures because otherwise, it’s quite hard to understand,” noted Minkyung Ki, a production manager at the gallery.

Collector interest was immediately apparent, with the gallery reporting that almost all of the works had sold out by midday of the VIP preview. By the end of the day, it had sold out.

The booth also comes amid a banner year for the South Korean artist, who is best known for her sculptural work. Part of the “Mesmerising Mesh” series was exhibited at the Thailand Biennale last year, and Yang will be the subject of a solo show at the Arts Club of Chicago as well as a major retrospective at London’s Hayward Gallery.

—Arun Kakar


Gagosian

Booth B6

With works by Sterling Ruby

The four massive Sterling Ruby paintings at Gagosian’s booth are commanding anchors on the ground floor of Frieze New York. Drawing a sizeable crowd for most of the VIP day, these works, part of his acclaimed “TURBINE” series (2016–present), are crafted through Ruby’s distinctive process of overdyeing canvases, then laying them on the floor of his studio, where they accumulate layers of incidental and deliberate marks, from splashes of paint to footprints. “I have referred to [his work] a lot in the terms of archaeology…because elements of these [works] are from the paintings that happened before,” said senior director Serena Cattaneo Adorno.

Riding the wave from the Venice Biennale—where Ruby’s work was featured in “Janus,” the inaugural exhibition at Berggruen Arts & Culture’s Palazzo Diedo—this solo booth is a bold continuation of the artist’s exploration into the forces of nature and human influence. The “TURBINE” paintings are particularly evocative due to their imposing scale and a maelstrom of color. Each work is rich with influences, from Futurism to literary allusions that surface in titles. For instance, TURBINE. TYGER TYGER BURNING BRIGHT (2024) evokes William Blake’s 1794 poem “The Tyger.”

On the outer walls, Ruby’s “DRFTRS” series offers a smaller yet no less expansive exploration of scale and transformation. Here, Ruby juxtaposes microscopic images of biological elements, often excerpted from textbooks, with cosmic vistas. The resulting, intricate collages contemplate the interconnectedness of all life forms and forces, resonating with themes of evolution and entropy.

“We were discussing what he wanted to do,” Adorno said. “And I think at the beginning, he would have given us something that is more domestic [in scale]. He didn’t want that, and we were up for the challenge. It’s proven to be doing very well, so we’re happy.”

—M.R.


kurimanzutto

Booth D13

With works by Felipe Baeza⁠, Gabriel Orozco⁠, Gabriel Sierra⁠, Haegue Yang⁠, John Giorno⁠, Minerva Cuevas⁠, Nairy Baghramian, Petrit Halilaj⁠, Rirkrit Tiravanija⁠, Roberto Gil de Montes, Ana Segovia⁠, and Bàrbara Sánchez-Kane

Among the most influential galleries in contemporary art, kurimanzutto is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and this booth stands as a testament of sorts to the enduring and continued appeal of its gallery roster.

“We wanted to emphasize different exhibitions and moments that are happening for [our] artists at the minute, in New York, Venice and beyond,” said partner Malik Al-Mahrouky. And there are moments aplenty in this presentation. Noche Americana-int.Cantina (2024), a painting by Ana Segovia, whose works can currently be found in the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, is a sterling example of the artist’s penchant for representing cinematic scenes with mysterious context. It stands opposite a sprawling wiry work by Kosovan artist Petrit Halilaj, whose monumental sculptures from the same body of work, titled “Abetare,” occupy the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop commission.

Another highlight from this section of the booth is a tempera and gold leaf on linen work by gallery mainstay Gabriel Orozco, Vitruvius Moebius (2023–24). The piece is from a recent body of work in which the artist undertook a study of Leonardo da Vinci’s legendary drawing of the Vitruvian Man (1492) and combined it with explorations of animals, plants, and cultural references. In this work, a silhouette of Leonardo’s study of a frog is cast between water lily imprints and layered within leaf prints and shimmering gold leaf.

In the second part of the booth, meanwhile, works by artists that use unconventional materials are on view, anchored by Nairy Baghramian’s S’accrochant (rouille) (2022), a formally inventive casted aluminum and stainless steel structure that hangs imposingly in the center. (Baghramian’s works are also in Venice, featured within Julie Mehretu’s Palazzo Grassi exhibition “Ensemble.”) It’s surrounded by standout works, including a 2022 linen canvas by Rirkrit Tiravanija that is partially layered by newspaper and splayed with clay and acrylic.

“Since opening our space here less than two years ago our presence in New York continues to grow” noted Al-Mahrouky. “Doing events like this are very important for our New York community.”

—A.K.


Kapp Kapp

Booth F3

With works by Stanley Stellar

Any conversation about the West Village in the 1970s could naturally arrive at Stanley Stellar’s photography. The legendary New York photographer is best known for his black-and-white images of gay men on Christopher Street or the West Side Piers in the ’70s and ’80s. A star in the Focus section, Kapp Kapp presents a solo booth that marks the first time Stellar’s color photography has been publicly exhibited. The presentation features 11 tender and provocative photos of queer life in the West Village.

“We really wanted to focus on this body of work, just given the context of where this fair is—maybe 15 or 20 blocks north of where these piers were and where these photographs were taken,” said co-founder Sam Kapp. “To reunite them on this side is really gratifying.”

The photographs, each priced at $8,500, represent a significant milestone for the 79-year-old artist, long celebrated for his black-and-white photography. These homoerotic works, first shot intended for color in the 1970s and ’80s when Stellar could not afford color printing, have now been printed in technicolor for the first time. The works focus on themes of sexual freedom, as seen in pieces like John, Keith, and Peter (1977), an image of three men where two are performing fellatio in the background, created before the devastation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This series, celebrating queer life, draws parallels to contemporary movements for queer liberation.

“This work can still be, though 40 years later, extremely provocative in many ways,” Kapp said. “So, it evokes reactions. I look around, and everyone’s having some kind of reaction, and some people, it makes them uncomfortable, and they get shy and run away, or some people just start laughing, or some people are completely lost and entranced in this work. It’s special and surprising that, still, this work is so radical.”

—M.R.


Jenkins Johnson Gallery

Booth B19

With works by Dewey Crumpler

Jenkins Johnson Gallery presents a solo booth of works by fellow Bay Area mainstay Dewey Crumpler. Crumpler is a former associate professor of painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, where his students included the likes of Kehinde Wiley and Deborah Roberts. The artist has a forthcoming show at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora later this year, and this booth presents a series of vivacious works spanning three decades of the artist’s career.

The presentation features Crumpler’s “Tulip” and “Metta” series of paintings and sculptures. The “Tulip” series takes the flower as a symbol for African bodies—both of which were taken out of their environment and sent around the world. Drawn to the tulip’s physicality, the artist emphasizes its strength against climatological adversity, pitting it within environments such as those depicted in Tulip Memories IV (1993–98), where it stands as if trapped within a mystical environment of flames and symbols.

AMMA, Swirling in Cosmic Water, 2024
Dewey Crumpler
Jenkins Johnson Gallery

Tulip Memories IV, c. 1993-1998
Dewey Crumpler
Jenkins Johnson Gallery

Crumpler’s paintings are rendered in a deep, layered intensity where color is given a pleasingly lively tactility thanks to the artist’s use of materials such as tar and bark. The standout painting AMMA Swirling in Cosmic Water (date unknown), for instance, depicts a tree standing on a surface that swirls with such force that it almost induces dizziness in the viewer. All the works on view here are undergirded by a transcendent, liberatory energy, which is increasingly resonating with a wider audience, explained Karen Jenkins Johnson.

“Bay Area institutions give reference to their own, and Dewey is starting to get attention,” said gallery founder Karen Jenkins Johnson. “This is a perfect time to talk about how we treat others with all that’s happening in the world, but with Dewey it’s also the perfect time to do it simply because of what we’re able to do with him in San Francisco.” Works at the booth are priced between $45,000 and $100,000.

—A.K.


MASSIMODECARLO

Booth A10

With works by Massimo Bartolini, Sanford Biggers, Mel Bochner, Elmgreen & Dragset, Dennis Kardon, Tony Lewis, Jonathan Monk, Ludovic Nkoth, Paola Pivi, Rob Pruitt, Pietro Roccasalva, and Mark Yang

The most photographed artwork at Frieze New York is bound to be Elmgreen & Dragset’s Social Media (2024), a mesmerizing black-and-white merry-go-round with an unlikely passenger: a small stuffed white poodle. From the moment The Shed opened on VIP day, MASSIMODECARLO was a magnet for fairgoers; ironically, many took to social media and fulfilled the commentary made by the Danish and Norwegian artist duo.

“You know how you go down the rabbit hole when on Instagram’s feed—doom-scrolling—and you’re just continuously going through these images that Instagram provides for you according to an algorithm,” said Jade Yang, senior director in London. “The little poodle appearing before you every 30 seconds on this rotating roundabout is like you’re clicking on one image of a cute dog and being presented with hundreds more like it—and there is seemingly no way of stopping it.

Tivoli, 2024
Mark Yang
MASSIMODECARLO

It Goes Without Saying / In Other Words / Talk is Cheap, 2023
Mel Bochner
MASSIMODECARLO

“Elmgreen & Dragset always [make commentary] with humor,” Yang continued. “Here we are, laughing at the fact that we’re in this rabbit hole without having intended to be in it when we’re on Instagram. In a way, this dog comes back to us without us trying to have it come back. It’s just in front of us continuously.”

MASSIMODECARLO’s booth also features several knockout pieces, such as Rob Pruitt’s A Month of Sunsets (February 2024) (My Caribbean Vacation) (2024), made up of 29 mini abstract-gradient paintings; and Mark Yang’s Tivoli (2024), a painting depicting headless, wrestling bodies. Prices across the booth range from approximately $25,000 to $250,000.

“Every single work has gotten attention and interest, so we’re happy with our selection,” Yang said. “Sometimes, it can be one-sided, but this year—so far, it’s been only two or three hours—all of them have gathered healthy interest.”

—M.R.


Mendes Wood DM

Booth D6

With works by Varda Caivano, Pol Taburet, Rosana Paulino, and Antonio Obá

If the South American art world continues to go from strength to strength (and based on this year’s Venice Biennale, it certainly is), then few galleries represent its growth and continued artistic dynamism as much as Mendes Wood DM. The São Paulo–founded gallery’s booth offers a broad group presentation with the dual themes of metamorphosis and transformation, which are touched upon in varied and intriguing ways by the gallery’s impressively diverse roster.

For example, in Varda Caivano’s canvas Untitled (2024), compositions appear trapped in a gestural rhythm, the result of a process where the Argentine artist works on the floor of her studio, applying paint on one side of the canvas before reversing and painting again to transfer color between both sides.

Among the larger pieces in the booth is a two meter diptych by Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino taken from the artist’s “Jatobás” series, which was on view in the 2022 Venice Biennale’s main exhibition “The Milk of Dreams.” Here, a pair of female figures are depicted as rooted into the ground, holding a handful of plants and flowers, respectively, that touch on themes of colonial structures and mythologies, which characterize the artist’s oeuvre.

Another outstanding work is a tender new painting by Antonio Obá, kurú keré: antebellum / estripulia (2024), accompanied by a body of works on paper that complement the artist’s current solo show at the gallery’s space in Germantown, New York. Spirits were high in the gallery’s booth, which was among the busier at the fair.

“We have been doing Frieze New York for many years and it’s always a great opportunity to see our friends in New York and meet new ones,” said gallery director Audrey Rose Smith. “We have a relatively new gallery here in Tribeca that opened two years ago, and this is a further extension of that platform. We’ve already placed a number of works in the booth and have met wonderful new collectors from New York and afar.”

—A.K.


Instituto de Visión

Booth D9

With works by Abel Rodríguez, Nohemí Pérez, Claudia Fontes, Carolina Caycedo, and Tania Candiani

Instituto de Visión’s tightly curated group presentation is focused on the intersection of the human condition and our natural environment. Among the five noteworthy artists whose works are on view, Argentine artist Claudia Fontes presents a series of striking ceramic works. In Las Poetas (#1) (2024), a female figure appears to be swallowed up by her long hair, while in Canción de despedida (2024), disparate beads and leaves are scattered by a half-submerged head. These works grapple with “the relation between the body, humanity, and nature as an identity and how we’ve been displaced from nature,” explained senior director Beatriz López.

López noted that the booth is reflective of the gallery’s core program, which considers “the relationship between nature, humankind, ecology, and post-colonial issues.”

This thematic overtone is addressed more optimistically by another artist, Abel Rodríguez, whose works are prominently featured in the 60th Venice Biennale. His work on paper El árbol de la vida y la abundancia (2023) depicts various animals gathered under the Tree of Life, symbolizing our reliance on and relationship with nature.

One final standout is Tania Candiani’s El Tarahumar (2024) from the series “Dance Scores.” This piece features 28 embroideries, each mounted on sewing rings with a 15-centimeter diameter, translating the dance steps of the Tarahumara community from northern Mexico into visual form. These works embody themes of legality, prophecy, and fertility, reflecting the cultural rituals and beliefs of the Tarahumara people.

These works range from approximately $20,000–$50,000 apiece, and were reportedly receiving interest from enthusiastic collectors throughout the early hours of VIP day.

—M.R.


Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel

Booth B15

With works by Gokula Stoffel, Valeska Soares, Antonio Tarsis, Rodrigo Cass, and Pélagie Gbaguidi

“We brought to Frieze an expressive balance between established and new artists from our program,” noted Alex Gabriel, the partner-director of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro gallery Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel. Indeed, this booth is a broad display that contains no shortage of standouts. Among them are a series of 2023 paintings by the gallery’s newly represented artist Pélagie Gbaguidi (priced from $20,000–$50,000). The Beninese artist embeds colonial and postcolonial themes into blurry, vivid depictions of Black bodies that spill across their canvases.

There is also a work by celebrated Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes, Olê Olá (2020), a spiraling, geometric composition that blends graphic and chromatic patterns. The work, priced in the range of $500,000–$1 million, is being shown in the U.S. for the first time following the artist’s solo show at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo in 2021. That museum’s director Adriano Pedrosa included Milhazes in “Foreigners Everywhere,” the international exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, which he curated this year.

incandescence, 2023
Pélagie Gbaguidi
Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel

Doubleface (Alizarin Crimson), 2017
Valeska Soares
Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel

Elsewhere, Brazilian artist Gokula Stoffel’s Oceano de leite (2024)—priced at $10,000–$20,000—offers a softer counterpoint to Milhazes’s more rigid abstraction. The oil-on-jacron-fabric piece depicts a cartoonish face in the corner of a square that contains a constellation of circular amoebas, which appear to be floating in space. Stoffel and Anderson Borba—whose sculptures in the booth touch on elements of mysticism and anthropomorphism—are currently being featured in a joint show at François Ghebaly in New York, marking both artists’ U.S. debuts.

—A.K.



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