Frieze New York Goes Digital
In a pre-COVID art world, it wasn’t uncommon for works to be sold from JPGs and PDFs before art fair booths are even installed; the press-preview, vernissage and public hours merely social window dressing. But as Frieze New York “opened” this week - the first of the major fairs since the global COVID-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions - they offer up their version of what the art fair might look like in the time of the pandemic. Writer Anni Irish toured their virtual viewing rooms and has shared her picks.
Over the last two months, millions of people around the world have been affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the art world is no exception. Frieze New York is the latest art fair to adjust its viewing to accommodate this evolving situation. For the first time Frieze New York moved online due to the COVID-19 virus. Viewing rooms have become the new normal in the art world and Frieze has also embraced this as a way for art goers to still experience work. Given the way the world has been affected by the pandemic, the decision was also made in an effort to make the fair free and accessible to all
This year's internet-based fair is full of surprises and features over 200 galleries online. The range of artists is diverse and includes the well regarded curated series “Dialogos” which launched last year and features the work of trailblazing Latinx artists from Chicago. Through a series of viewing rooms that are assigned to each gallery, viewers are still able to view the same work they would have encountered in person but through a new digital platform.
The pivot to a digital space has forced many fairgoers to interact with the art in a different way and it also forced the staff at Frieze to rethink this issue. In an effort to make the experience more immersive, an app was created which allows people to see the full range of works offered in the viewing rooms and even has the fun capability of viewers being able to create 3D renderings of certain artworks in their own home. There is also a 'sign the book feature' which is similar to the guest book available at galleries and lets people know you were there. In an effort to give back to the art community at large as well, Frieze has partnered with Human Rights Watch as well the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) LA, the California Institute of Art (CalArts), and other institutions in an effort to help with larger fundraising initiatives. Below are some of my favorite viewing rooms in the 2020 online version of Frieze.
Matthew Marks Gallery
The online viewing room of Matthew Marks featured a strong grouping of heavyweights such as Robert Gober, Jasper Johns, Charles Ray, Ellsworth Kelly, and newcomer Rebecca Warren among others. An untitled work by Johns from 2019, features a black and grey smiling skeleton on a stage. The skeleton is front and center with curtains framing it. The white around the figure creates a kind of luminosity that makes the skeletal figure stand out more its open, almost smiling mouth is both cartoonish and ghoulish. It has an old timely cartoonish quality and the subject matter seems even more relevant today than ever given the ongoing threat with a global pandemic.
Rebecca Warren's 2018 sculpture entitled “These Carols I” is evocative and tactile. Somewhere between a mystical wizard's sword, walking stick, and abstracted sculptural drawing, it is challenging to pin down its origin or reference. Each of the hand-painted bronze sculptures takes on another life both in terms of scale and textural qualities. They have a vitality that suggests a larger life outside of the sculpture itself and also seems to be a nod to the artist's process. First, they are formed in clay then eventually cast into bronze and painted. They are textural and metallic, shiny even, and have a crystal-like appearance. Warren’s sculptures have a kind of otherworldly energy and this is apparent even from the photos of them.
Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel
This group show takes on a larger conceptual project considering the broader subject of urban and city dwellings, and how money and other external influences affect these spaces. Featuring the work of Sara Ramo, Luiz Zerbini, Yuli Yamagata, Barbara Wagner, and others, this is one room that is helping to challenge the online viewing platform; a heady task to approach within the digital space. The project’s conceptual underpinnings benefit from a considered viewing, more readily allowed by the time and space of virtual viewing in the comfort of your own home.
Some of the standout work included a collaboration between Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca. Beginning in 2018, Wagner and de Burca have explored the inner workings of a community center in Scarborough located outside of Toronto and the larger creative youths who came to collaborate with one another through film. Featuring a series of stills from the film, the images capture the characters within it. The scenes are both candid yet performative and capture how the narratives of these young people’s lives are intermingled with the structure of the film. One young woman is caught singing behind a tile red wall that is outlined in white hexagons. Her hair is braided, and she is looking off to the side, her view avoiding the gaze of the camera but she is snapping both fingers and is wearing a multicolored windbreaker. Other stills feature two young women reading to one another sitting by side. Another showcases a young man behind a white tile wall, plugged into his cell phone looking at his reflection in it as he grooms his beard with an afro pick. As film stills, these young people are suspended in these activities, a feeling we can collectively relate to at the moment.
Also in the booth are a series of vibrant paintings, drawings, and mixed media works of similar color pallets and vibrancies from a variety of artists. The mixed media piece “Busto Salsicha” by Yuli Yamagata uses silicone, fibers, and sewing thread to create a lush tactile surface that leaps off the canvas. Part soft sculpture, part painting, part assemblage, the piece has kinetic energy that invites the viewer to engage with it on more intimate terms.
Sikkema Jenkins & Co
This year Sikkema Jenkins' group show for Frieze brings together William Cordova, Kara Walker, Jeffery Gibson, Zipora Fried, and others. They’ve chosen to highlight the diversity of their program, evident in the backgrounds of their artists, conceptual content of the work, and the various mediums they all employ. The pairing of Walker and Gibson is particularly focused and smart.
Kara Walker, who is among the most widely known contemporary artists, continues to push the envelope with a series of drawings and her signature silhouetted paper collages. An untitled drawing with no year given features eight small watercolors and ink on paper sketches of women and girls performing various tasks. One woman is breastfeeding, another appears to be a young girl with her arms outstretched looking as if she wants to be picked up. In one of the portraits, a young girl looks defiantly ahead with her gazing meeting yours. Her hair is piled on top of her head, and her ruffled collar covers her neck. Her blue ruffled dress becomes iridescence towards the bottom of the paper where Walker has stopped painting. It is powerful and confrontational.
Jeffrey Gibson's bright colorful works are activated through text and specific cultural reference. In works such as “I Gotta Get a Hold of Myself” and “Know You're Magik Baby”, text is incorporated into the painting and between Gibson’s application of color and use of the grid, it is almost abstracted. These specific works are built through collage, digital and silkscreen printing in a technicolor palette of blue, yellow, red, and purple. In his 2019 piece “People Like Us” Gibson creates a robe-like structure comprised of a multitude of flowing lengths of fabric and a tightly beaded geometric bodice, spelling out the words “people like us”. The materiality and form of this work draw from the kinds of costume materials sold to dancers who perform on the Pow Wow circuit. Gibson's Native American heritage informs his ongoing investigations into representations of modernity within indigenous cultures.
Veda
Aviva Silverman's 2019 piece “We Have Decided Not to Die” is perhaps exactly what the world needs right now. Comical, whimsical, and artistically modeled, her miniature train set offers insight into larger issues of public and private space, surveillance, and the passage of time. Additionally, Silverman's work takes up the topic of representation and artifact. Working with miniatures she has painstakingly created dioramas with extensive detail, constructing humorous scenes on each of the train cars. One scene features the same female figurine dressed in a red jumper and is holding a mirror. Eleven figurines fill the car in total with flowers placed throughout and some hold signs announcing “Tax the Church”, “God Loves Fags Rom 8:39”, and “How Dare You Presume I'm Heterosexual.” Another train car showcases a large pile of miniature guns on top of fake grass with three donkeys eating off to the side. There is a tension that Silverman is able to create through her invoking something bucolic while also absurd and jarring. The juxtaposition is prevalent in this specific work and given the current state of the world, being able to view as photos translate very well and make the work resonate in a different medium.
The online version of Frieze New York is on view through May 15, 2020, through their website and app.