Frieze Online Viewing Room

In Gupta’s Altered Inheritances (Last Name) series, the artist traces individuals who changed their last names either to succeed, or to survive. A linear presentation of images is layered with the reasons that names were shed, and then split in half, evoking a sharp break with the past. This work features the significant names of Albert Einstein and Muhammed Ali, among others.

Kurant examines how energy and capital move through the physical and the social world. Energy turns into information, and information into capital. In a world in which information is nearly free, social capital begins to play a far more significant role than financial capital, since its aggregated value can be algorithmically calculated. Just like coal, oil, gas and solar energy, social energies are now being mined, quantified and precisely valorized by algorithms, and so they became part of the global energy market.

Conversions is a liquid crystal painting the artist developed in conjunction with her residency at MIT Center for Art and Science Technologies. The work is connected to a computational, simulated “artificial society” model where ongoing data input is expressed on the surface as constantly changing colors and forms. The work relies on a custom Artificial Intelligence algorithm which parses the Twitter feeds of protest movements around the world for sentiment analysis and feeds this data to the painting. Conversions will render the current aggregated social energy, or “mood" of the protest movements at a given moment in time, ranging from happiness, enthusiasm and hope to apathy, anger and frustration. Thus, Conversions is an abstract energy landscape, a portrait of the collective intelligence of aggregated social capital, a perpetual litmus test of the current temperature of social energies.

Composition with Yellow is rendered entirely in cast bronze, yet appears to be soft clay mid-way through the process of becoming a sculpture. Juxtaposing carefully composed figurative elements alongside architectural fragments, Manders thrusts the world we know into sharp contrast and heightens our perceptual understanding. The artist gives physical form to a dreamlike psychological space where objects are often made strange by some detail, for instance subtle alterations in scale. By casting the figure in bronze, he freezes this transitional moment in time forever, highlighting a sense of fragility and timelessness simultaneously.

Lisa Oppenheim’s newest body of work is a series of unique silver-toned photograms titled 4:3:2. Created for her recent solo exhibition at the gallery’s Los Angeles location, the artist used archival image sources and related material filters to explore the impact of celluloid roll film on the film and photographic industries. Featuring no image, these tiled photograms are the result of an experimental process of varied exposure to light and chemical wash. Each work features subtle variations of texture and tone with a metallic sheen, making oblique reference to the “silver screen” which continues to define the way we think of cinema, far into the digital age. As referenced in the series’ title, the proportions of the individual panels and overall dimensions of each work conform to the aspect ratio of early still images and silent motion picture film.

Taking inspiration from a lullaby in Roman Polanski's Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and

intertwining sleep with death, these seemingly soothing songs often have dual meanings

and are laced with disturbing lyrics. The sounds are contained within each of the barrels

and the sense of distance and isolation is palpable. Emanating from stainless steel barrels,

the sculptural acoustics suggest deep space, distance and memory. The voice recordings

are accompanied by a percussion beat set to the rhythm of the artist’s heartbeat, acting as

a metronome for the lullaby.

Culminating fundamental methods and concepts from her practice, Saban’s new Pleated Ink works use elements and processes that have continued throughout her career - the precision of laser cut paper, ripples created by printers ink, the rigid and mechanical forms of circuit board - these works bring together essential components of Saban’s oeuvre. Playfully undermining the relationship between form and function, each pattern echoes the geometric pattern of a specific circuit board that has played a significant role in the history of computer technology. Following the same binary logic as the loom, Saban’s new Pleated Ink series is created by a laser cutting machine cuts a sheet of paper in the precise pattern of a computer chip. Saban then presses the paper onto a wooden panel covered in a pool of printer ink. As a result, the ink forms lines and crevices along the exact pattern of particular computer chips, which are referenced in each title. These works are imbued with the imaginary depths of information carried on the filigree channels and wires of the microchips. 

In a figurative sense, an image is always a reservoir for information, thoughts and experiences. The term Speicher appears throughout Scheibitz' oeuvre and here is partnered with a number indicateing this is the artist's 1072nd painting.

This painting and the following sculpture will be featured in his upcoming solo exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York opening on October 29, 2020.

For over 20 years, the artist has developed this series that presents an object, unadulterated and isolated, yet framed in a way to allow the viewer to consider the ambiguity of one object's meaning. Framed as a precious cultural artifact, the found objects are stripped of their definition as commercial, or antique, or functional devices, etc. Instead, in Minimalist fashion they are open to boundless subjective interpretation. These new associations could be related to form and design, art historical reference, sociology or psychology, and are inevitably influenced by cultural and personal contexts and histories. This display of singular objects in a protected case, as opposed to his other works that arrange objects on an exposed shelf, continues a thread that runs throughout his entire practice: calling attention to the common rituals of collecting, framing, and presenting objects, and within this re-contextualization, touching on our aspirations and values in relation to the objects of our modern world.

Engaging our curiosity is Untitled (candle), which plays upon ideas of representation and contingency with an object whose state can shift between liquid and solid. Isolated and presented on a glass shelf inside the enclosed case, certain aspects of the object are activated and transformed in ways that might not occur if it seen in our everyday space. For example, in this context the volume of the wax figure is heightened, and a corporeal quality is apparent.

Regarded for his works on paper, Dirk Stewen has developed a rich and varied practice that incorporates aspects of photography, drawing, assemblage, collage, and embroidery. Drawing from his own collection of images, the artist presents unexpected yet poignant juxtapositions of forms, materials and ideas that suggest new associations and narratives. Faded photographs, watercolors, confetti and thread are among the many materials Stewen has recombined into poetic compositions that are at once visually arresting and charged with emotion.

Dishwashing Sculpture #14 is part of an ongoing series by Wermers of adapted ready-mades that play with degrees of function and misappropriation in the domestic environment. In precarious assemblages of pots, porcelain and kitchen devices stacked as if to dry, architectural ambition and daring statics form a contrast to female reproductive labour.

Lisa Williamson’s Body Board (Landscape) (2020) offers a reduced representation of space on a dichromatic field of green. Extrusions projecting off the surface further disrupt pictorial depth, prompting a restless classification between painting and relief. Body Board (Landscape) is currently included in Restless Index, a gorup exhibition at Tanya Bonkdar Gallery, Los Angeles curated by Kelly Akashi and Cayteano Ferrer.