The Best of Frieze New York

In a gloriously hot and art-filled week in New York, a look back at what stood out from the rest at Frieze.   

^{DO HO SUH, ENTRANCE, GROUND FLOOR, 348 WEST 22ND STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10011 USA, 2016. ©DO HO SUH.}

A different approach than his immersive architectural spaces, Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s Entrance, Ground Floor, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011 USA (2016) commemorates a personal symbol – the entrance to his former home – that is pressed onto paper resembling a relic of its remnants and a past life (or meaning). Through its haunting outline, told by its dissolved shell and residual threads that once held together its sewn form, the artist examines the nostalgic elements that surround an entranceway. As an extension of his research of space and body relationships, this work skillfully recognizes a new context of how one identifies with space in a two-dimensional expression. 

Formally striking and seductively obscure, Romanian artist Mircea Suciu’s work often explores the woes of great inner strife, particularly ones answering to socio-political distress and how it deeply or subtly affects our mentality. Deriving from his experiences living through Romania’s violent revolution in 1989, Suciu’s profound figurative paintings draw parallels to various historical events and current affairs to express an universal tension stimulated by fear and terror. In this work, The constant feeling of guilt (after Delacroix) (2018) [shown above], a loss of identity and shame is suggested through the veiling of the subject’s eyes and its complex layered applications, leaving behind an equally fascinated and ambiguous impression.  

A leading figure of The Pictures generation, artist Barbara Bloom’s conceptual interior works here bridge the exchange between image and object in an enticingly clever approach through mirroring effects. Among the collection, a full mirrored vanity presents on its table an appropriated black and white photograph of an actress reading a script on the same vanity which displays the very script and smaller vanity mirror in the image. This mirror is also carefully etched with an image of the subject’s hand on her head echoing the same gesture in the photograph on the vanity table, allowing the viewer to imagine possible interpretations – looking beyond the looking glass. In Corner: Rodin Sculpture (1998), Bloom cleverly places the photograph of the sculpture in a corner mirroring the corner displayed in the image matched with the dissecting line of the frame’s border, ultimately creating a continuous visual and conceptual intersection between object and image. 

^{MOHAN SAMANT, MAN WITH A CHILD IN A CHAIR, 1982. COURTESY OF JHAVERI CONTEMPORARY.}

Indian artist Mohan Samant’s multi-layered piece Man with a Child in a Chair (1982) evokes a wildly visceral texture and imagery constructed by his complex materials and techniques. Through cut and folded paper carefully arranged over a coated plastered canvas, elaborate levels of illustrated figures and patterns convey a primitive and entangled composition of a man and child.   

An oscillating and powerful piece of work, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri’s Untitled (2016) offers an intriguing introspection behind the mystery of Australian Aboriginal artist’s mastery. Tjapaltjarri, who was discovered as a young adult living nomadically with his Pintupi family in an isolated desert in Australia, created original work based on stories of his ancestors and the land he and many former generations have lived on. Although recogonized as part of the Design Painting movement in the 1970’s, Tjapaltjarri’s finely tuned dots and lines generate a divinely optic trip for your eyes – a reason to set this apart from the rest.

^{AHNNA LEE IS A NEW YORK-BASED WRITER AND EDITOR.}

^{LEAD IMAGE: MIRCEA SUCIU, THE CONSTANT FEELING OF GUILT (AFTER DELACROIX), 2018. COURTESY OF ZENO X GALLERY.}