In the endless search for great new art, there is no more reliable guide than artists themselves. For its 20th edition, which kicks off tomorrow, Frieze London took note of this insight and tapped eight international heavyweights, including Simone Leigh, Tracey Emin, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, to spotlight up-and-coming talents for solo exhibition booths at the fair. The result is an exciting list of rising names working across disciplines, from digital video to experimental installation to traditional painting. Here, CULTURED outlines what to expect from Frieze’s inaugural Artist-to-Artist section, and where you can find their work at the fair.
Ayoung Kim, proposed by Haegue Yang
Gallery Hyundai (Seoul, New York)
Like the Berlin-based Haegue Yang, Seoul-based artist Ayoung Kim leads a media-mingling practice focused on contemporary global issues. Kim’s video on view at Frieze, Delivery Dancer’s Sphere, is an absurdist, sci-fi take on the gig economy, following a female delivery worker as she’s managed by an algorithm. Yang describes the piece as “a compelling visual commentary” with a “uniquely focused—as well as porous—queer sensibility.”
Mark Barker, proposed by Wolfgang Tillmans
Shahin Zarinbal (Berlin)
U.K.-born, Berlin-based multi-disciplinary artist Mark Barker has a “profound humanism” in his approach to art, says Wolfgang Tillmans, who also describes Barker’s work as “peculiar, in the best sense of the word.” For Frieze London, the young artist’s installation focuses on toilet exhaust systems, touching on themes of bodily experiences as they relate to the built environment.
Deborah Anzinger, proposed by Simone Leigh
Nicola Vassell (New York)
“I cannot think of a more important artist right now,” Simone Leigh says of Deborah Anzinger, community organizer and founder of the Kingston, Jamaica-based artist-run initiative New Local Space. Working across painting, sculpture, video, and sound, Anzinger engages the work of Jamaican sociologists and activists, probing racial and gendered constructs from a Caribbean perspective. At Frieze, she presents Untitled Transmutations, a new body of works on paper drawn with the ground charcoal of local cookshops.
Simonette Quamina, proposed by Alvaro Barrington
Praxis (New York, Buenos Aires)
The New York- and Massachusetts-based artist Simonette Quamina grew up moving between South America, the Caribbean and New York. Having grown up in Grenada and the Caribbean communities of Flatbush, Brooklyn himself, Alvaro Barrington looks at her work and sees “an idea of a Caribbean where nature, mysticism, and play are all together.” Quamina’s latest large-scale collages, monochromatic combinations of graphite, silk, and printmaking, embrace Afro-Caribbean aesthetics as they present themes of labor, migration, and spirituality.
Fabian Knecht, proposed by Olafur Eliasson
Alexander Levy (Berlin)
Born in Germany in 1980, Fabian Knecht’s conceptual practice is fundamentally anti-authoritarian and progressive. At Alexander Levy, he will present Laughing is Suspicious, a textile installation made from personal clothing woven into nets, designed to camouflage Ukrainians at war with Russia. According to fellow Berlin-based artist Olafur Eliasson, Knecht’s conceptual clarity “simultaneously has the poetic weight of a feather and is as heavy as the earth.”
Vanessa Raw, proposed by Tracey Emin
Carl Freedman Gallery (Margate)
British artist Vanessa Raw paints colorful, idyllic landscapes with electrified edges, where nude feminine subjects find spaces of sexual intimacy in the evening light. Her presentation at Frieze marks her debut with Carl Freedman Gallery. Known for the groundbreaking themes of female sexuality in her own work, Tracey Emin finds Raw’s imagery especially “free and liberating.” In Emin’s words, “She can really paint.”
Wantanee Siripattananuntakul, proposed by Rirkrit Tiravanija
Gallery Ver (Bangkok)
“People Say Nothing Is Impossible, but Beuys Does Nothing Everyday” is the title of Bangkok-based artist Wantanee Siripattananuntakul’s solo presentation starring Beuys, her African gray parrot. Named after the late Joseph Beuys, he’s a recurring fixture in her critical takes on social issues in Thailand, including the tenuous relationship between nature and politics. For Rirkrit Tiravanija, Siripattananuntakul’s work represents an opportunity for open dialogue, “between the Thai and Western art worlds, between the centers and the periphery.”
Carlos Villa, proposed by Anthea Hamilton
Silverlens (Manila, New York)
Combining cultural motifs from various San Francisco diasporic communities in a wide range of mediums, the late Filipino-American artist Carlos Villa filled in the blanks of “a western historic insufficiency,” says British multidisciplinary artist Anthea Hamilton. At Frieze, Silverlens presents samples from his 1980s body-print series, in which he pressed his own paint-covered hands and face against unstretched canvas.
