Frieze New York 2019

Artists Announced for Frieze Sculpture New York

14 International artists will participate in the inaugural edition of Frieze Sculpture in New York, including Ibrahim Mahama, Paulo Nazareth, and Hank Willis Thomas.

Main image: Pedro Reyes, Seer,  2018. © Pedro Reyes. Courtesy: Lisson Gallery, London

Main image: Pedro Reyes, Seer,  2018. © Pedro Reyes. Courtesy: Lisson Gallery, London

Frieze announces the selected artists for the launch of Frieze Sculpture in New York, presented at Rockefeller Center in partnership with Tishman Speyer.

Curator Brett Littman (Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York) has selected and placed new and significant works by 14 international artists; all presented by world-leading galleries. Including many artists showing public sculpture in New York for the first time, Frieze Sculpture will represent Rockefeller Center’s largest display of artwork to date and create a major new public art initiative at the heart of Manhattan, with free admission to all. The launch of Frieze Sculpture in New York follows its establishment in London’s Regent’s Park, and will open at Rockefeller Center on April 26 in the lead-up to Frieze New York. It will remain on view and open to all through June 28, 2019.

The selected artists participating in the inaugural New York edition of Frieze Sculpture are: Nick Cave, Aaron Curry, Jose Dávila, Walter De Maria, Rochelle Goldberg, Goshka Macuga, Ibrahim Mahama, Joan Miró, Paulo Nazareth, Jaume Plensa, Pedro Reyes, Kiki Smith, Sarah Sze, and Hank Willis Thomas.

Loring Randolph (Artistic Director, Frieze Americas) said: “Frieze Sculpture will represent a new public space initiative for Frieze New York, hosting a series of sculptural ideas which comment on the instability of our time.”

Curator Brett Littman said: “Frieze Sculpture this year will be an immersive campus-wide installation that is responsive to the architecture of Rockefeller Plaza – one of the most important art deco spaces in the world – and Isamu Noguchi’s seminal bas-relief News (1940) which celebrates freedom of expression. Featuring 14 artists from across four continents, the selected artworks respond to our global political moment. Human in scale and including many artists who have not placed public sculpture in the city before, Frieze Sculpture will also suggest new possibilities for sculpture in New York and the contemporary world.”

Paulo Nazareth’s first public artwork in New York will memorialize pivotal figures and moments of the Civil Rights movement, with large aluminium cut-outs of Tommie Smith, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ruby Bridges. A new commission for Frieze Sculpture, Jaume Plensa’s monumental portrait Behind the Walls (2019) will be a powerful statement about individual responsibility today. Nick Cave’s oversized bronze gramophone grows from his raised fist, suggesting the power to activate change. While Hank Willis Thomas frames public spaces for conversation, reflection and agency, with his brightly coloured, comic book-inspired speech bubbles and benches.

Ibrahim Mahama’s commission, which replaces the 192 flags of the U.N. around the Rockefeller Center skating rink with 50 handmade jute flags fabricated in Ghana, will be a reminder of the extreme income and resource disparities that exist around the world. And Rochelle Goldberg’s sculptures, which look like a menagerie from an apocalyptic Noah’s Ark, will give us a glimpse into what a post-ecological reality might look like.

Frieze Sculpture will encourage exploration of the whole campus, including its interior spaces, and hidden histories. Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ artworks Jaguar and Seer will be placed inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where Diego Rivera’s original mural was removed in 1934 because it included an image of Vladimir Lenin, and was replaced with Jose Maria Sert’s American Progress (1937). Thus visitors will be invited to witness a major historical moment of censorship. Inspired by Pre-Columbian sculpture, ancient mythology and synesthetic connections, Jaguar and Seer also represent Reyes’ first public sculptures in New York.

Similarly exploring ancient themes while questioning recent art history, Jose Dávila will make his New York debut with Joint Effort (2019), which merges natural stone with modern concrete to create a symbolic totem linking Heaven and Earth. Nearby, Sarah Sze’s Split Stone (7:34) (2018) will present a natural boulder cut open to reveal a generic image of a sunset, which Sze captured on her iPhone, alluding to Chinese scholar’s rocks and the materiality of time. Aaron Curry, who is also known for his unusual combinations of materials, textures, scales, colors and forms, will present Metnedaruth (2009/2014), which recalls Noguchi’s interlocking work from the 1940s; while the iconic Modernist Joan Miró’s Porte II (1974) points to Cubist and pro-Surrealist sculptural ideas about form and process.

Littman has chosen the lobby of 10 Rockefeller Center, which once housed the offices of Eastern Airlines’, for Goshka Macuga’s portrait heads of Yuri Gagarin, the first Russian astronaut and Stephen Hawking, the great astrophysicist. In conversation with the large-scale mural by Dean Cromwell called The Story of Transportation (1946), Macuga’s installation will be a conceptual homage to travel, and additionally represents the artist’s first public siting in New York.

Inside the marble lobby of One Rockefeller Plaza, Walter De Maria’s three stainless steel sculptures entitled Truth/Beauty will be in conversation with Carl Milles’ original Rockefeller commission, Man and Nature (1941). By pairing Milles and De Maria, visitors will see man, nature, truth and beauty all in one place. And outside, Kiki Smith’s Rest Upon (2009/2016) – a life-sized bronze sculpture of a lamb on top of a sleeping woman – lies on the floor in the walkway between the two channel gardens, as a powerful, figurative symbol exploring the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

 

Participating Artists, Frieze Sculpture New York 2019

Nick Cave – Presented by Jack Shainman Gallery
Aaron Curry – Presented by Michael Werner Gallery
Jose Dávila – Presented by Sean Kelly
Walter De Maria – Presented by Gagosian Gallery
Rochelle Goldberg – Presented by Miguel Abreu
Goshka Macuga – Presented by Andrew Kreps
Ibrahim Mahama – Presented by White Cube
Joan Miró – Presented by Acquavella Galleries
Paolo Nazareth – Presented by Mendes Wood DM
Jaume Plensa – Presented by Richard Gray Gallery and Galerie Lelong
Pedro Reyes – Presented by Lisson Gallery
Kiki Smith – Presented by Pace
Sarah Sze – Presented by Gagosian Gallery
Hank Willis Thomas – Presented by Jack Shainman Gallery

#FriezeArtFair #FriezeNY #FriezeWeek

 

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