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Frieze London

Past
Oct 12 – Oct 17, 2021
London

Art Fair Details:
Frieze London
Regent's Park
Oct 13 – 17, 2021

Online Preview:
Opening Oct 12, 2021

Pace Gallery is pleased to share details of its participation in Frieze London 2021. On the occasion of Pace’s new London gallery opening at 5 Hanover Square, Pace’s Frieze booth will present work by contemporary artists who will form a central component of the gallery’s exhibition programme in 2022, as Pace enters a new phase in London.

Spanning painting, sculpture, installation, ceramic, photography and textile, Pace’s booth will display an array of work by some of the most exciting international artists working today.

An imaginative work on paper inside a unique artist made case by Yoshitomo Nara will be on view ahead of his forthcoming exhibition at Pace this November, which marks the artist’s first solo presentation with the gallery in London. Latifa Echakhch will present a new diptych painting in advance of her first exhibition with the gallery in March 2022 and representation of Switzerland in the 59th Venice Biennale. Likewise, the booth will show new paintings by Marina Perez Simão, Nigel Cooke and Nathalie du Pasquier, all of whom will have a solo exhibition at Pace in London in the year ahead.

The presentation will include new painting and sculpture by Torkwase Dyson, whose exhibition Liquid A Place will inaugurate the new gallery. Dyson’s work is currently the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Hall Foundation at Schloss Derneburg, Germany. Additionally, Dyson has recently installed a site-specific sound piece in the Serpentine Pavilion as part of the ecological project Back to Earth. Dyson’s experimental, multidisciplinary work explores issues of environmental racism and black spatial liberation strategies through her singular vocabulary of geometric abstraction.

In concert with the booth, an exclusive online viewing room dedicated to new works on paper by Dyson will be available on pacegallery.com.

Further showcasing the gallery’s strong contemporary focus, a new work by Adam Pendleton will be on display, coinciding with Adam Pendleton: Who Is Queen?, the artist’s critically acclaimed installation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Alongside Pendleton, the booth will feature a three-panel textile piece by multidisciplinary artist Yto Barrada and a large-scale signature charcoal work by Robert Longo. Additional booth highlights include a remarkable triptych painting by pioneering abstract artist Sam Gilliam and notable photographs by Peter Hujar and Nina Katchadourian, demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to a robust global photographic programme.

Featured Highlights

Nigel Cooke, Spartans, 2021, oil and acrylic on linen, 225 cm × 164 cm (88-9/16" × 64-9/16")

Nigel Cooke

"A decorated athlete, the decorated herm of Pan in Nicolas Poussin’s The Triumph of Pan (1636), the young Spartans of Degas posturing to each other in the athletic field... these forms talk to each other through my painting Spartans (2021), drawing the animal out of the human, weaving the ancient and mythic into the sporting arena, flowing the face of a mandrill into an Egyptian mask. Like all my works, it aims at the indescribable connection between sensations, the miracle of the conscious mind, and the potential of the line to create multiple possibilities and fluid identities."

Nigel Cooke

Torkwase Dyson

Though she works across multiple mediums, Torkwase Dyson primarily considers herself a painter, and she uses geometric abstraction to create an idiosyncratic visual language that is both diagrammatic and expressive. In her painting practice, Dyson gradually builds compositions through repeated marks, brushstrokes, and washes of colour, engaging with form, opacity, and texture to explore themes of Black spatial negotiation and liberation.

In these paintings, Dyson contrasts the wood grain with smooth and rough graphite, piercing the tondo with a central acrylic form. Hovering between painting and sculpture, Dyson’s recent I Am Everything That Will Save Me (Bird and Lava) (2021) works feature curves, trapezoids, and triangles. This language of abstraction speaks to the physical spaces inhabited by Black and brown bodies, such as the hull of a slave ship or the garret in which people hid. In Dyson’s words, “Thinking through the histories of Black liberation, these are the victories that fortify my being in the objects I make. It’s time for a new relationship with abstraction, an illegal abstraction developed out of the condition of a new world building toward liberation and revolution.” Concurrent with Frieze, Torkwase Dyson’s exhibition Liquid A Place inaugurates Pace’s new gallery on London’s Hanover Square.

Torkwase Dyson, I Am Everything That Will Save Me #4 (Bird and Lava), 2021, acrylic, string, and graphite on wood, 60" (152.4 cm), diameter
Torkwase Dyson, I Am Everything That Will Save Me #5 (Bird and Lava), 2021, acrylic, string, and graphite on wood, 60" (152.4 cm), diameter

Latifa Echakhch

Switzerland-based, Moroccan-born artist Latifa Echakhch’s multidimensional painting, sculpture, and installation practice investigates the complexities of political and cultural histories. The present large-scale diptych, which is from the artist’s new Sun Set Down series, features bright swathes of pigment emerging from a muted grey background—a visual contrast transforming the composition into a dynamic abstraction.

Echakhch applies black paint, covers it with concrete and a final layer of acrylic pigments, and chips away fragmented sections on its surface, revealing a material substratum and sunset within the canvas. Fluid in its creation, Sun Set Down (diptych 01) (2021) explores 20th century cultural viewing habits, mainstream landscape photography, and the impact colour and size have on one’s perception of objects and nature. Describing her pentimento-like practice as a synthesis of “politics and poetry,” Echakhch employs methods of erasure and destruction to transform everyday objects into signifiers of identity, history, and mythology. In 2022, Echakhch will represent Switzerland at the 59th Venice Biennale and present her first solo exhibition with Pace at the gallery’s new London space on Hanover Square.

Latifa Echakhch, Sun Set Down (diptyque 01), 2021, acrylic paint and concrete, vinyl and fiber on canvas mounted on aluminum, 78-3/4" × 59-1/16" (200 cm × 150 cm), each panel 78-3/4" × 118-1/8" (200 cm × 300 cm), overall

Peter Hujar

The photographer Peter Hujar is known for his poignant and psychologically charged portraits of artists, writers, and performers in New York City’s downtown scene in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout those years, the artist captured images of friends, lovers, and creatives and intellectuals in the city’s queer communities.

With Ethyl Eichelberger as Medea (1979), Hujar created a portrait of a prominent and prolific actor, musician, playwright, and drag performer. In this image, Ethyl Eichelberger has taken up the titular role from the ancient Greek tragedy Medea, reinventing the mythological subject for a modern audience. Gazing wistfully into the distance, Eichelberger holds an accordion, which is partially visible in the photograph. Eichelberger, whose career spanned theatre, film, and television, often explored the struggles and achievements of plucky women from history, literature, and mythology.

Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger as Medea, 1979, vintage gelatin silver print, 14-3/4" × 14-3/4" (37.5 cm × 37.5 cm), image 20" × 16" (50.8 cm × 40.6 cm), paper 22-5/8" × 20-11/16" × 1-7/16" (57.5 cm × 52.5 cm × 3.7 cm), Frame
Peter Hujar, David Brintzenhofe in Drag, 1983, vintage gelatin silver print, 15-1/2" × 13" (39.4 cm × 33 cm), image 19-7/8" × 15-7/8" (50.5 cm × 40.3 cm), paper 22-5/8" × 20-11/16" × 1-7/16" (57.5 cm × 52.5 cm × 3.7 cm), Frame

Nina Katchadourian

"My first book sorting took place in 1993, the result of an open-ended experiment with a group of student friends, where we lived together in a house for a week and made art with only what we found there. My process hasn’t changed much since then: I start by sorting through a collection of books, selecting particular titles and arranging them into stacked groups so that their titles on the spines can be read in sequence as short sentences, phrases, or narratives."

"I’ve made many ‘Sorted Books’ works in libraries and personal book collections over the years, and since each one yields something distinctly different, I’m still adding to it 28 years later. The newest installment, Noguchi, is my response to The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum’s invitation to work with the sculptor ’s personal book collection. Noguchi’s books are split between his two former homes, one in Long Island City, New York, and the other in Mure, Japan. The titles in his library reflect his friendships with Marcel Duchamp and Buckminster Fuller, among others, and the many places his imagination and curiosity took him. Beat poetry, philosophy, Japanese craft traditions, ancient Greek art, and contemporaneous paperbacks on health and fitness all share space on his shelves."

Nina Katchadourian

Nina Katchadourian, Ezra Pound in Italy, from the series Noguchi, (“Sorted Books” project, 1993 and ongoing), 2021, c-print, framed, 13-5/8" × 20-1/8"
Nina Katchadourian, How to Wrap Five More Eggs, from the series Noguchi, (“Sorted Books” project, 1993 and ongoing), 2021, c-print, framed, 13-5/8" × 20-1/8"
Nina Katchadourian, Leonardo, from the series Noguchi, (“Sorted Books” project, 1993 and ongoing), 2021, c-print, framed, 13-5/8" × 20-1/8"
Nina Katchadourian, Light on America, from the series Noguchi, (“Sorted Books” project, 1993 and ongoing), 2021, c-print, framed, 34.6 cm × 51.1 cm

Yoshitomo Nara

The pioneering artist Yoshitomo Nara often explores the emotional complexities of children in his practice, which is anchored by drawing and spans sculpture, painting, photography, and installation. In his work, Nara has depicted children’s resistance and rebellion as well as quietude and contemplation, celebrating the introspective autonomy of the imagination and the individual.

Combining coloured pencil with acrylic paint, the artist’s spontaneous drawings— diaristic doodles, expressive tracings of thought, or boldly sketched lines—portray figures experiencing a range of emotions and reflect his own ruminations, feelings, and dreams. Nara creates his drawings anywhere and at any time—as a result, they embody a sense of freedom that is vital to his practice. He pins works to his studio walls, places them in drawers, or piles them high on his desk. Oftentimes he returns to them to tap into memories he channels into new paintings and sculptures. Untitled (2004–05), which features small drawings on torn pieces of paper and the backs of envelopes installed beneath a glass tabletop, is emblematic of Nara’s distinct work.

Yoshitomo Nara, Untitled, 2004-2005, Color pencil and ink on paper or envelope, 45 cm × 140 cm × 90 cm (17-11/16" × 55-1/8" × 35-7/16")

Adam Pendleton

Through a sustained and multifaceted engagement with painting, Adam Pendleton explores the tensions between language, representation, and abstraction. The present work is a striking example of one of Pendleton’s Untitled (WE ARE NOT) paintings in which the artist meditates on three simple words: “we,” “are,” and “not,” forming a complex matrix of meanings and constructing what Pendleton refers to as a series of “incomplete postulates.” He explains that these paintings “like the voices of a multitude, do not accede to an identity. In their combinatorial repetition, they instead unfold a multiplicity: not-beings, not-nots, and being-nots.”

Made up of multiple layers of spray paint, sharply defined brush marks, collage, and photographs, the Untitled (WE ARE NOT) paintings reveal a process of metamorphosis that refuses to speak itself into a final form, favoring a state of indeterminacy. As if capturing the process of predication, Pendleton’s paintings generate open questions: Who or what is this we? Who or what is this not-we? What are we not? Are we whatnot? Who or what is not? Originating from Pendleton’s seminal “Black Dada” manifesto (2008), the phrase “WE ARE NOT” is broken down and merged to form all-over compositions. Pendleton’s reiteration and reconfiguration of his past language extend the dynamics of his ongoing Black Dada project, a conceptual framework through which the artist explores ideas about the future through the evocation of the past, with an explicit emphasis on the relationship between Blackness, abstraction, and the avant-garde. The Untitled (WE ARE NOT) paintings similarly address questions of historical and collective definition, alluding obliquely to the rhetoric of contemporary identity politics. Pendleton uses the repetition of such words to produce a kind of combinatorial patterning—what starts as “WE ARE NOT” quickly distills into “NOT NOT WE” and “NOT ARE WE.” These permutations, hovering on the edge of signification and meaninglessness, encode the ambiguous, arbitrary, and fictitious logics at the heart of identity, which is often taken as self-evident.

Adam Pendleton, Untitled (WE ARE NOT), 2021, silkscreen ink on canvas, 8' × 10' (243.8 cm × 304.8 cm)

Yin Xiuzhen

Working primarily in sculpture and installation, Yin Xiuzhen often uses secondhand objects like clothing, shoes, and suitcases to explore globalisation, capitalism, and memory. Yin began using preowned clothing as a material in her practice in 1995, collecting items from family, friends, and strangers to create what she calls “a new ‘collective’ with a hidden subconscious.”

In the artist’s words, “I feel that clothes are like a second skin; they have their own expressive language and are connected with their times and therefore with history.” In Action No. 3 (2019), Yin encases used clothes in porcelain, marrying ancient Chinese ceramic traditions with remnants of contemporary life. Yin gives these wall-mounted sculptures a contemporary aesthetic by pulling out strands of soft fabric to juxtapose the high shine of glazed porcelain. The scraps of salvaged and repurposed fabric serve as relics of their owners’ lived experiences and as reflections of the destruction and waste left behind by fleeting trends of fast fashion in rapidly industrialised countries.

Yin Xiuzhen, Action No. 3, 2019, porcelain, used clothes, 92 cm × 91 cm × 4 cm (36-1/4" × 35-13/16" × 1-9/16")

All Works

Yto Barrada, A day is a day, 2020, 3 panel folding screen, cotton and dyes from plant extracts, 77" × 36" (195.6 cm × 91.4 cm), 3 panels, each approx.

Yto Barrada

Keith Coventry, Big Junk 1, 2021, oil on linen, Perspex and wood, 220 cm × 175 cm × 9 cm (86-5/8" × 68-7/8" × 3-9/16")

Keith Coventry