VPN (Very Personal Network) by Acaye Kerunen

Frieze London

Past
Oct 12 – Oct 16, 2022
London

Art Fair Details:

Frieze London
Regent's Park
Booth C16
Oct 12 – 16, 2022

Connect:

(opens in a new window) Frieze London
(opens in a new window) @friezeofficial
(opens in a new window) @pacegallery

Above: Acaye Kerunen, VPN (Very Personal Network), 2022 © Acaye Kerunen

Pace’s booth at Frieze London will feature paintings, sculptures, and installations by a group of leading contemporary artists.

The presentation will focus on works by artists who joined the gallery in 2022: Gideon Appah, Huong Dodinh, Virginia Jaramillo, Acaye Kerunen, Kylie Manning, and Mika Tajima. Highlights include otherworldly paintings, hovering between abstraction and figuration, by Appah and Manning. Alongside these paintings, evocative abstractions by Jaramillo, Dodinh, and Tajima speak to the gallery’s long and proud history as a champion of Minimalism. In Negative Entropy (Stripe International Inc., Legal Department, Light Gray, Quad) (2019), Tajima marries the language of abstraction with advanced technology to create what she calls an “acoustic portrait”, in which an audio recording is transposed into a Jacquard weaving.

Sculpture and installation will also figure prominently in Pace’s Frieze London booth. A large-scale, hand-woven installation made with natural fibres by Kerunen will be a centerpiece of Pace’s presentation. Dismantling the boundaries between fine art and craft, Kerunen’s work explores ideas related to power, gender, and labor. Kerunen, whose multidisciplinary practice spans installation, poetry, performance, and curation, is representing Uganda this year at the 59th Venice Biennale. Sculptures by Lynda Benglis, Yoshitomo Nara, and Joel Shapiro—reflecting diverse approaches to the medium—will also be exhibited.

Pace’s Frieze London booth will spotlight Tara Donovan’s first-ever NFT project, titled QWERTY and realized as part of a multifaceted partnership between Pace Verso, the gallery’s web3 hub, and the leading generative art platform Art Blocks. The gallery’s presentation at Frieze London will also nod to its upcoming programming in the English capital, where solo exhibitions dedicated to Nigel Cooke and Keith Coventry will take place at Pace in late 2022 and spring 2023, respectively. Works from Cooke’s Rubino series and new large-scale paintings by Coventry will be exhibited on Pace’s booth at the fair.

Charcoal and ink works by Robert Longo will also be on view in the gallery’s booth in advance of the artist’s exhibition at Pace’s LA gallery in November. Likewise, photographs by Richard Misrach will figure on the booth to coincide with the artist's exhibition at Pace’s Geneva gallery, opening 14 October.

Tara Donovan

QWERTY
Presented by Pace Verso and Art Blocks

For her forthcoming NFT project presented by Art Blocks x Pace Verso, Tara Donovan meditates on the ways that type can function as a building block for creating patterns. Each NFT depicts repeating, mesmeric arrangements of a single letter or symbol represented on computer keyboards. Variations in column and row density, character quantity, and wave frequencies and amplitudes, among other traits, can be experienced in these NFTs.

New Artists

Gideon Appah

b. 1987, Accra, Ghana

Gideon Appah draws on childhood memories and dreams, as well as West African landscapes and popular culture for his dazzling, bold, and jewel-toned paintings. From his studio in Accra, Ghana, Appah discusses his deeply personal work.

Appah creates dreamlike and enigmatic paintings, drawings, and mixed media works through explorations of Ghanaian history and popular culture. Drawing on childhood memories, dreams, local newspapers, comic books, and Ghanaian leisure culture, as well as West African landscapes, many of his works are an ode to his hometown of Accra and incorporate symbols present in the fabric of the city, such as signs, local businesses, and lottery numbers. In addition to these themes, the artist explores recurring imagery relating to water, horses, and death. Appah examines these subjects through a fauvist lens, painting in a flattened perspective and incorporating a dark color palette with dazzling hues of royal blue, crimson, dark orange, and white. Recently, the artist has focused on Ghana’s rapid sociopolitical and cultural transformations from the 1950s to the 80s, as it became the first sub-Saharan country to gain independence. Through his practice, Appah forges idiosyncratic compositions that balance deeply personal, introspective themes with lingering ambiguities. At the core of Appah’s practice is a fascination with the intangible.

Boy with a Spear by Gideon Appah — Gideon Appah, *Boy with a Spear*, 2020-22, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 243 cm × 183 cm (95-11/16" × 72-1/16")

Boy with a Spear (2020-22) is a dreamlike image, composed of a figure standing in the foreground with a spear held across their torso. In the background, four figures sit, facing away from the viewer. A river, a recurring image within the artist’s oeuvre, bisects the canvas and a range of mountains take up the top third of the painting. For Appah, painting is an intuitive act of translation of the inner self to the exterior world. His works meditate on religious, mythical, folkloric, and environmental subjects. Like in the present work, the artist often situates his figures amid abstracted, otherworldly backdrops, imbuing his paintings with ethereal qualities. Making use of flattened perspective and a dark color palette that is punctured by jewel- toned blues, pinks, and yellows, Appah draws viewers into new realms. Stitching together real and imagined memories, fantasies, and everyday experiences, Appah constructs quasi-theatrical compositions open to viewers’ interpretations and subjectivities.

Virginia Jaramillo

b. 1939, El Paso, Texas

In a career spanning over six decades, Virginia Jaramillo has ascended into the annals of contemporary art as a result of her steadfast precision and rigorous form across her oeuvre of minimalist paintings. In this film, Jaramillo discusses her lifelong practice marked by a commitment to complementary tenets of minimalism and modernity.

Jaramillo’s East of the Sun / Deep Field (2022) is stunning in its vibrancy and scale, the electricity of its geometric lines emblematic of Jaramillo’s six-decade career of radiant, illuminated paintings. Following a life dedicated to her practice, first in Los Angeles, later in New York City, and now on Long Island, Jaramillo received her first solo exhibition at 80 years old, the monumental show Virginia Jaramillo: The Curvilinear Paintings, 1969–1974 (2020) at the de Menil Foundation, Houston. This exhibition highlighted Jaramillo’s most famous body of work, her Curvilinear paintings: a celestial group of vibrant abstractions from the late 1960s and early 70s made up of rich color fields intersected by serpentine lines of brilliant color which sweep the viewer’s gaze across the canvas.

East of the Sun / Deep Field by Virginia Jaramillo — Virginia Jaramillo, *East of the Sun / Deep Field*, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 72" × 72" (182.9 cm × 182.9 cm)

East of the Sun / Deep Field is a nod to and advancement of Jaramillo’s Curvilinear paintings. In this work, one straight line cuts across the canvas at roughly the one-third point latitudinally on the canvas, while two others arc dramatically off-center, the inevitable intersection of the three lines taking place outside of the bounds of the canvas, charging the composition with the mysterious potential energy of this unseen junction. These striking projectiles are arresting against the composition’s lush backdrop, flooded with mottled shades of azure and lapis lazuli, redolent of the kaleidoscopically shifting patterns of light on the bottom of a pool of water. The mathematical exactitude of Jaramillo’s work follows a tradition of 20th century painters, notably Agnes Martin, whose meticulous grids and careful pencil lines allowed for precise geometric arrangements across large-scale canvases. Jaramillo’s geometry is free from the restraints of Martin’s grid, and her lines instead radiate outward, arcing in dazzling hues, often dimidiating Jaramillo’s signature planes of rich color, as in the present work. Jaramillo’s interest in mathematics spans from classical to sacred geometries, and across her oeuvre she recalls broader occupations with Celtic and Greek mythologies, geography, Japanese aesthetics, and cosmology. Her lifelong practice has been marked by a commitment to complementary tenets of minimalism and modernity; East of the Sun / Deep Field encapsulates this enduring form and advances her distinguished oeuvre of tremendous, otherworldly paintings.

Acaye Kerunen

b. Kampala, Uganda

Through her multidisciplinary practice, Acaye Kerunen seeks to dismantle the hierarchies of fine art and craft, elevating women’s labor within socio-political systems. Her mutable, expansive installations—for which materiality is a central component—can be understood as living artworks. In this film, Kerunen spoke from her London studio about the influence of craft on her practice and how her work embodies rich artistic legacies originating in Africa’s Great Lakes region.

Kerunen’s radical reconstitution of historical craftmanship into the league of fine art has established the artist, storyteller, writer, actress, and activist as a singular voice in contemporary artmaking. Kerunen’s practice is rooted in continuous engagement with women’s issues, from liberation and the dismantling of colonial and patriarchal structures to poverty, domestic violence, and women’s struggle to embrace their artistic selfhood within these oppressive systems. Deconstruction and reconstruction are central tenets of her practice; her work seeks to disassemble the colonial and patriarchal structures that have long inhibited women's freedom and artistic expression in Africa. Kerunen has explained that African women’s artmaking has been confined to utilitarian practices, for example weaving to produce mats and baskets rather than weaving for the sake of artmaking. She employs local craftspeople—mostly women—to produce the woven, dyed, and otherwise handcrafted materials in her work, thereby supporting a community of women artmakers. Kerunen was selected to represent Uganda at the 2022 Venice Biennale alongside Collin Sekajugo, resulting in the Ugandan pavilion receiving a special mention for best national participation. This was Uganda’s inaugural participation in the Venice Biennale, for which Kerunen and Sekajugo collaborated on the pavilion’s exhibition Radiance – They Dream in Time, which showcased their shared interest in deconstructing western tropes about Africa and the othering of African art.

Very Personal Network (2022) is a kaleidoscopic mixed media installation, its title referencing the constellation of submarine cables and connections required to bring the internet to Africa. The artist described the inspiration for the present work as deriving from the shutdown of the internet—inhibiting access to news and social media—in advance of Uganda’s 2016 and 2021 elections. When internet access was restored, Ugandans still found social media access to be blocked, and discovered that it could only be reached through a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Kerunen’s work plays on this acronym, her iteration alluding to the importance of internet access for political information as well as to maintain social relationships. She explains that the web-like, expansive structure of Very Personal Network symbolizes “the interconnectedness of freedoms and oppressions; the knots speak to all these things, and the constant cycles of renewal by the rounded shapes.”

Kylie Manning

b. 1983, Juneau, Alaska

Using brushwork, light, and balance, Kylie Manning captures moments within her personal history, such as her time working on Alaskan fishing boats and memories of surfing in Mexico. On the occasion of her inclusion in Pace's 2022 Frieze London presentation, Manning spoke from her Brooklyn studio on the “hyperpersonal” nature of her ethereal oil paint compositions.

Manning is a Brooklyn-based artist and a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, with a double Major in Philosophy and Visual Arts. Manning uses pure pigments dispersed with safflower and walnut oil to create whirlwinds of thinly layered oil sketches using a variety of traditional techniques. The artist imbues her compositions with a contemporary feminist sense of humor, re-contextualizing the macabre aftermath of traditionally gendered “masterpieces” and is known for lyrical, atmospheric paintings that blur the boundary between abstraction and figuration.

Brontide (a low rumble of distant thunder) by Kylie Manning — Kylie Manning, *Brontide (a low rumble of distant thunder)*, 2022, oil on linen, 60-1/8" × 82-1/8" × 1-1/2" (152.7 cm × 208.6 cm × 3.8 cm)

Brontide (a low rumble of distant thunder) (2022) takes its title from the term used to describe sounds associated with seismic origins, usually occurring near sources of water. In this stunning work, bright, warm hues of red, orange, and pink oil paint are punctuated by radiant blue and purple strokes crossing the canvas, highlighting and contouring the forms that dominate the composition. Deeply informed by her experiences living in Alaska and Mexico for extended periods during her childhood, the artist’s works situate genderless, anonymous, spectral figures within expansive landscapes that capture the light and environments specific to these locations. Layers of color and frenetic brushstrokes produce a radiant, energetic effect that seems to refract light across Manning’s canvases. Gestural and ethereal, her paintings speak to both personal and universal themes related to place, memory, and presence. Many of Manning’s paintings use mark making as a language to express a visual musicality, bringing the emotional and intellectual resonances of music to canvas. Grounded in the natural and meteorological phenomena of various latitudes and longitudes around the world, many of her works reflect the unique climate conditions and terrain of different geographic locations. The monumental scales of these paintings immerse viewers in ambiguous, otherworldly scenes wherein figures’ interactions with one another and their environments defy easy interpretation.

Mika Tajima

b. 1975, Los Angeles, California

At the heart of Mika Tajima’s multidisciplinary practice is a profound inquiry into the conditions of human agency and self-determinacy in built and virtual spaces. Tajima invited Pace to her Brooklyn studio, where she discusses how her work approaches concepts of performance, control, and freedom.

Negative Entropy (Stripe International Inc., Legal Department, Light Gray, Quad) by Mika Tajima — Mika Tajima, *Negative Entropy (Stripe International Inc., Legal Department, Light Gray, Quad)*, 2019, Polyester, nylon, rayon, acrylic, wool, wool acoustic baffling felt, and wood, 73-1/2" × 55" (186.7 cm × 139.7 cm)

Tajima’s expansive practice is a rigorous interrogation of the deeply-sensed, invisible forces of the physical and technological world. Through her work, the artist creates heightened encounters that target the senses and emotions of the viewer, underscoring the three central tenets of her practice: performance, control, and freedom. Encompassing sculpture, painting, textile, performance, and installation, Tajima’s work seeks to materialize the ungraspable, bringing awareness to the energies and frequencies that exist within and between humans. A driving force in Tajima’s practice is an inquiry into the relationship between nature and technology, mapping and exploring the relational structures of human bodies in built environments.

Borrowing their title from French composer Erik Satie’s Musique d’ameublement (Furniture Music)— a series of background musical compositions with no discernible beginning or end—Tajima’s Art d'Ameublement paintings translate the feeling of a place into an abstract visual landscape. Tajima expertly creates soft, otherworldly color gradients by spraying paint onto an acrylic surface. Recalling the visual language of 20th century abstraction while maintaining a contemporary aesthetic is a singular talent of Tajima’s practice and speaks to her broad understanding of the history of art. Each piece in this ambient painting series is subtitled by a geographic location, drawing on psycho-geographic associations of the designated place. In this work, Tajima nods to a weather station and in so doing, recalls natural imagery such as the sun rising over a misty lake or cool morning fog dissipating over the ocean.