Frieze Art Fair 2016: Nine Must Sees
Our Assistant Editor's picks of the stands to see at this year’s Frieze Art Fair
Martin Soto Climent
Smartly binding the works in the sculpture park to those inside Frieze, Martin Soto Climent’s sculptural instillation located in the entrance space is an intricate web of stretched nylon tights. This web is momentarily activated by acrobats who engage with the material and environment, a use of performance which is a career first for the artist. The use of the everyday evokes Arte Povera, whilst Climent’s ability to entirely transform the object into a container of artistic energy highlights the influence of Surrealism on his work.
P.P.O.W. [B19]
Portia Munson’s ‘Pink Project: Table’, originally conceived for the ‘Bad Girls’ exhibition at the New Museum in 1994, is a heady powder pink nostalgia trip. Familiar found objects are typologically arranged into what becomes a mountain of indistinguishable curios and knickknacks, commenting on gender stereotypes, waste, and consumerism. P.P.O.W. are also showcasing Betsy Tomkins’ ‘Women’s Words’; a project started in 2002 where the artist asked for people to email her words used to describe women, the result being a revealing mixture of misogynistic, derogatory, humorous, and affectionate terms.
Frieze Project Space [P6]
Even nipping to the loo is an immersive art experience in Julie Verhoeven’s ‘The Toilet Attendant…Now Wash Your Hands’, which sees the artist stage a performative intervention in one of the fair’s lavatories. Declaring the toilets ‘a comfortable place of refuge’, Verhoeven is the first artist to use this space as an art arena, and she has put on quite the show; disco music, sculpture composed of everyday items found in restrooms, and garish stickers on the back of each cubicle door.
Marianne Boesky [B11]
Inviting yet eerie, Hans Op de Beeck has taken over the Marianne Boesky stand in his reinterpretation of ‘The Collector’s House’ shown at Art Basel, presenting ‘The Silent Library’, opting for a brilliant, almost blinding white, which gives the entire room the look of cool marble. Picture frames adorn the walls, a bookcase full of books, momento mori, fruit and masks, a reinterpretation of the reclining nude in the form of a jean clad woman lying atop a plinth, mobile phone and cigarettes in tow; all of it devoid of colour, all of it unsettling yet visually engaging in it’s uniformity.
Pillar Corrias [B1]
After the recent opening of the Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern everyone’s talking about Philippe Parreno, and after his combination with Shahzia Sikander at this year’s Frieze, that talk only looks to become louder. Parreno’s ‘Speech Bubbles (Transparent Orange)’ float about and fill the ceiling of the Pillar Corrias stand, in part framing Sikander’s mesmerising ‘Singing Suns’ with music by Du Yun.
Kate MacGarry [A3]
London based Francis Upritchard delivers a charming solo presentation at Kate MacGarry, with her signature brightly coloured figural sculptures, and abstract sculptures and pots dotted about a wash of subdued pastels. An interest, exploration, and even satirical critique of anthropology and museological display are all present in the aesthetic of both the individual objects and Upritchard’s method of deliverance.
Air de Paris [N9]
A new addition to this year’s show, ‘The Nineties’ sees old and new galleries, as well as disbanded spaces, revisiting pioneering exhibitions of the 1990s, selected by curator Nicolas Trembley. A restaging of Pierre Joseph’s 1991 work ‘Characters to be Revisited’ by Air de Paris quite literally stops me in my tracks; a performance artist, dressed in other timely attire, has ventured from the confines of the booth to sweep the carpet at my feet. Other characters brought to life include a rather intimidating policeman and someone, face covered, seated in a corner, whose consciousness was indicated only by the occasional rearrangement of their protruding dirtied legs and feet.
Victoria Miro [C4]
In the same way the majority of Yayoi Kusama’s oeuvre hook and reel in the spectator, ‘My Eternal Life’ is immediately captivating in all of its boldness. Kusama’s trademark dots, on this occasion bright orange, allure an impressive crowd, a crowd no-doubt still in awe of the artist’s recent, hugely successful retrospective at Victoria Miro. And Kusama isn’t the only big player laid on by the gallery this year; Grayson Perry’s ‘Tomb of the Unknown Soldier’, as well as Chantal Joffe’s portraiture of notable Jewish Women, which premiered in her 2015 show at the Jewish Museum, New York, are on display.
Hauser & Wirth [D8]
In ‘L’Atelier d’Artistes’ Hauser & Wirth have presented, among others, Louise Bourgeois, Francis Picabia, and Phyllida Barlow, precariously positioned atop or adjacent to one another, in a display which mimics a bustling artist’s studio. Besides being tremendous fun, this stand encourages contemplation on the nature of the art market and the notion of art as commodity via recreation of the very environment of creative origin, the maker’s space.
Image: Portia Munson 'Pink Project: Table' (1994/2016) - P.P.O.W.
Frieze Art Fair runs 6th - 9th October at Regent's Park
