Around the galleries – Frieze hits New York, plus other highlights

From the May 2022 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. 

Frieze New York

‘We are thrilled to be returning to the Shed,’ says Christine Messineo, director of Frieze New York, which is celebrating its 10th edition this month. Last year’s shift from the usual big white tent in Randall’s Island to Dillier Scofidio + Renfrew’s cultural centre at Hudson’s Yard heralded the birth of a more local, more intimate Frieze; this year follows suit, with 65 galleries – slightly up from last year’s 63, but still considerably less than the 190 who showed in 2019 – most of which hail from the Big Apple. 

For Messineo, the fair offers a chance to ‘continue some of the work of Los Angeles’ (she is also director of the LA fair), by ensuring that the programme focuses on non-profit art spaces ‘with a mission based in community building’. The fair this year features collaborations with institutions such as Artists Space and The Kitchen, which emerged in New York in the 1970s and have exerted a huge influence on the contemporary art scene in the city today. 

Elsewhere, the fair includes presentations from the city’s major blue-chips, including Hauser & Wirth, Sean Kelly, Tanya Bonakdar and David Zwirner. James Cohan brings the multifaceted geometric abstractions of Eamon Ore-Giron, a Los Angeles-based painter who draws on everything from hieroglyphs to Brazilian Neo-Concretism for influence; Casey Kaplan offers Liam Gillick’s sleek sculptures, which parody post-industrial production. Among the international exhibitors who have made the trip are Carlos Ishikawa from London, which brings work by the young painter Issy Wood, and Galerià Jaqueline Martins from São Paulo, which explores the work of the influential Brazilian artist Hudinilson Jr. 

Infinite Regress CLIV (2021), Eamon Ore-Giron. Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle; courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York; © Eamon-Ore Giron 2022

Another fair looking to the local during Frieze Week is 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, which is hosting its first physical edition in the city since 2019 in a new home, Harlem Parish, a church built in 1897 that has functioned as an arts space since 2017. A programme of community events is being planned to run alongside the fair, while there is also a particular focus this year on galleries and artists from New York, including a presentation by Harlem’s Long Gallery. Elsewhere, the fair’s typically eclectic showing of work by artists from throughout the continent of Africa and its diaspora is on view. 

Beyond the fairs, this year’s Frieze Week offers the chance to take in a broad range of museum shows in the city – among them Charles Ray’s sculptures at the Met, Jonas Mekas’s photographs at the Jewish Museum and Giuseppe Penone’s first experiments with porcelain at the Frick Madison. Messineo says that she is looking forward, above all, to ‘the reunion of our global arts community’ that the return of Frieze Week offers in the city. ‘We gather, we look at art, we have a drink (or two), we gossip and we celebrate our artists, our galleries and our institutions.’

Once Upon A Who (2021), Simon Fujiwara. Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin; © the artist

Frieze New York takes place at the Shed from 18–22 May.

Gallery highlights

This month’s gallery highlights focus on four shows not to miss at London Gallery Weekend (13–15 May). 

Rosemarie Castoro: Working Out
6 April–21 May
Thaddaeus Ropac, London

‘I’m not a minimalist,’ Castoro declared in 1986. ‘I’m a maximust.’ The Brooklyn-born painter and sculptor honed her style in the milieu of New York minimalism, but her works, especially in sculpture, reveal a reckoning with the body that is absent from that of her (male) peers. This first solo show in the UK focuses on her giant Brushstrokes panels and her gesso sculptures from the 1970s, as well as late works fashioned from welded metal. 

Hans Hartung: Painter, Photographer
29 April–1 July
Waddington Custot, London

The German-French painter is most famous for his gestural, yet also highly structured abstract paintings. Less well known is that he was also an inveterate photographer; some 30,000 negatives are held by his foundation. This exhibition looks at how Hartung used photography as a tool to explore patterns and textures in both the natural world and the built environment – both for its own sake, and to develop his painterly practice. 

Fetonte (2021), Jem Perucchini. Corvi-Mora

Jem Perucchini
28 April– 4 June
Corvi-Mora, London 

Ethiopia-born, Milan-based painter Jem Perucchini seeks out visual archetypes from across the world – ranging from Christian iconography and representations of the Greek pantheon to images drawn from African visual traditions – and combines them in his vivid, mystical oil paintings which he sees as a bridge between cultures, and a reflection of his experiences in Italy. This first solo show also includes recent ceramics. 

Lonnie Holley
13 May–9 July
Edel Assanti, London

Lonnie Holley is among the most distinguished self-taught artists to have emerged from the American South. Aside from making music, he is best known for his elaborate found-object assemblages, fashioned from objects he salvages from scrapyards and wherever else he travels. This exhibition at Edel Assanti is his first solo show in the UK  since 2004, and includes works made from objects Holley has gleaned from recent trips to the UK.

Hung Out III (2020), Lonnie Holley. Edel Assanti

Fair in focus

Art Basel Hong Kong
27–29 May
HKCEC

Delayed from March, Art Basel’s Hong Kong fair this year features 130 galleries from 28 countries – up from 104 last year, and now just over half of the figure the fair boasted in 2019, before the pandemic struck. 

As ever, there is a strong showing of work from across the Asia-Pacific region; the main section includes new works by Zheng Guogo and Pak Sheung Cheun on show at Vitamin Creative Space, and among the 16 newcomers are Jason Haam from Seoul, Vin Gallery from Ho Chi Minh City and local gallery Lucie Chang Fine Arts. Look out, too, for Rossi & Rossi’s presentation of works by Tsherin Sherpa. 

Highlights of the fair’s curated section, ‘Insights’, include the broad survey of works by Wang Chuan, brought by A Thousand Plateaus Art Space, tracing his career from his role in the Scar Painting movement which arose in the late 1970s, in response to the Cultural Revolution, to recent paintings the artist has made during lockdown in New York. Finally, Axel Vervoordt’s survey of Norio Imai is not to be missed. 

From the May 2022 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.