May 07 2021

Roundup from Frieze New York 2021

by Paul Laster

TAL R’s bronze sculpture Young Boy Walking (2019), portraying a crudely formed, comical figure in motion, stands alongside his surreal still life painting Untitled Flowers (2020) at Anton Kern Gallery (New York), with ALIZA NISENBAUM’s canvas Neena dreams of DJing (2021) flanking it and NICOLE EISENMAN’s small Untitled (2021) painting further back. All photos by Paul Laster for ArtAsiaPacific.

Relocating from Randall’s Island for a pared down edition at The Shed in Hudson Yards due to Covid-19 crowd restrictions, Frieze New York looks sharp, lively, and—other than the limited tickets and multiple procedures to gain entry—is easy to view.

The tenth edition of the fair presents 64 international galleries, with the majority of them from the United States or with branches in New York and Los Angeles. Most of the exhibitors opted for group presentations, with the exception of a few, including David Zwirner (New York / London / Hong Kong), James Cohan (New York), and Company (New York), which mounted solo shows of Dana Schutz, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and WangShui, respectively. Among the duo presentations were Huma Bhabha and Daniel Hesidence at Salon 94 (New York), and John Pai and Minjung Kim at Gallery Hyundai (Seoul).

Here are some of the highlights from the fair:

Combining a hand-blown, floral glass vessel with a bronze casting of her own hand, KELLY AKASHI’s Life Forms (2021) captures a surreal situation in which the artist’s hand is mysteriously seen modifying her own artwork at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (New York / Los Angeles).

At Sean Kelly Gallery (New York), IDRIS KHAN’s photograph of sheet music awash in blue pigment, Each Second and Second (2020), is inspired by the passage and collapse of time within textual, musical and visual bodies. This was juxtaposed with photographer and videographer WU CHI-TSUNG’s Cyano-Collage 101 (2021), which combines the 19th-century photographic printing process with the tradition of Chinese shanshui landscape painting.

SUKI SEOKYEONG KANG’s three found-object assemblages at Tina Kim Gallery (New York) are built in relation to the artist’s body, no sculpture exceeding what she can physically lift or handle. Employing everyday materials, Narrow Meadow #19-15 (2018–19) implies the motion of a figure in all directions through the addition of six wheels to a child-size assemblage. Mat Black Mat 122 × 163 #18-19 (2018–19) defines the area on a woven mat that a traditional Chunaengmu dancer would occupy, and GRANDMOTHER TOWER — tow #20-01 (2020) simulates the elderly woman’s frail, ready-to-topple form.

LEE BAE’s Issu du feu ch-87 (2003), a finely crafted abstract patchwork of rich, monochromatic black charcoal on canvas, is contrasted with JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL’s seductive Murano glass, gold leaf, and metal Gold Necklace (2018) at Perrotin (New York / Paris / Hong Kong / Seoul / Tokyo / Shanghai).

HADI FALLAHPISHEH’s sculpture Young and Clueless (2021) assembles stuffed animals and glazed ceramic pots on a fabric-covered wooden base to create a royal hierarchy of gentle creatures at Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York).

TERENCE KOH’s Untitled (2021) mixed-media drawing, which is the same size as the artist’s body and features elements that correspond to its different parts, is juxtaposed with colorful, cartoon-inspired, dreamlike drawings by self-taught artist SUSAN TE KAHURANGI KING at Andrew Edlin Gallery (New York).

Known for making mythological figures that mix Western and Eastern artistic influences along with a dash of science fiction to give them an extraterrestrial look, HUMA BHABHA was represented at Salon 94 (New York) with the sculptural, bronze creature The Ancient and Arcane (2021). It stood out against DANIEL HESIDENCE’s Untitled – Ledger (2020–21), an abstract painting of plant-life seemingly caught in a cosmic storm.

Artist and filmmaker WANGSHUI attacks the surface of their honeycomb, aluminum paintings with brushes, blades, and grinders to construct nightmarish abstractions inspired by an American reality television show about finding true love, in the works El Decorum, Queen, and Blindsided (all 2021) at Company (New York).

ZHANG HONGTU, who has lived in New York since 1982, explores his migration to America in the painting Morning (2019) by combining the memory of his first sighting of bison 60 years ago with a utopian vision of present-day China, while YAO JUI-CHUNG creates a shanshui fantasy using pens and gold leaf on paper in Nature Plus: Lake of Dreams (2021) at Tina Keng Gallery (New York).

Inspired by early animation, construction scaffolding, pests and flora, medieval torture devices and folk art, CINDY JI HYE KIM’s mixed-media painting on silk, The Face and Its Name (2021), is suspended in the booth of François Ghebaly (Los Angeles), near a digital sculpture by MERIEM BENNANI and paintings by SAYRE GOMEZ and SCOTT KAHN.

At Gallery Hyundai (Seoul), JOHN PAI’s abstract, multi-planed sculpture All the Roses (2021), which simulates the shape of floral petals in welded steel, accompanies MINJUNG KIM’s Timeless (2019), a minimal, mixed-media painting on hanji paper intended to capture the essence of ocean waves and the eternity of their sound.