Frieze Masters

Inspired by the painted illuminations in medieval manuscripts, Shechet has reimagined the traditional format of the art fair booth as a faceted architecture, which resembles a jewel from an aerial vantage. Shechet’s presentation will bring together two bodies of work: a suite of brilliantly colored and richly textured sculptures from her ongoing Together series, which she began during the Covid pandemic in 2020; as well as drawings and cast paper vessels from the 1997 series, Once Removed. In collaboration with Sam Fogg, the booth will place Shechet’s sculptures and works on paper in dialogue with two medieval Book of Hours manuscripts, richly ornamented objects of personal devotion which have informed the artist’s work both visually and conceptually.

The international artists chosen by Wagstaff for Studio are united by a shared impulse to excavate the past as a way of enlivening contemporary practice. For Shechet, the studio is a living link across places and moments in time—a protean and ever-changing space. Located in rural upstate New York at the gateway to the Catskill mountains, her studio spaces are populated by a library of both found and fabricated forms—objects that are cast, carved, wrought, thrown, and fired—which together create a laboratory environment, interacting in generative ways to produce a material poetics that drives Shechet’s sculptural experimentation.