A heat wave inaugurated the opening of Frieze New York, but collectors were happy to sweat it out in search of deals and discoveries. The latter was available in spades. Here, we share the names of five up-and-comers not to miss.
Simon Fujiwara | Esther Schipper Artist Simon Fujiwara serves up a controversial piece from “Hope House,” his recent Kunsthaus Bregenz show, at the entry to Esther Schipper’s booth. Anne Frank’s Birthday Cake (2018) comes out of an entire exhibition in which the artist painstakingly recreated a mutated but to-scale version of the historic figure’s house within the museum walls using a model he purchased in the gift shop. The sculpture, which calls to mind a photoshoot for the Food Network, points to the intersection of tragedy and consumerism.
Neil Beloufa | Mendes Wood While Neil Beloufa’s winter Palais de Tokyo exhibition earned the ire of some for its appropriative flourishes, his work at Mendes Wood redirects attention towards the artist’s hand. The untitled collage of cardboard and painted wood set in resin and metal calls to mind a pane of stained glass—one which exemplifies Beloufa’s constant process of accumulation and recontextualization. In the same way we digest information, Beloufa plays with materials—using the ingredients to create new compositions, new dimensions.
Eliza Douglas | Overduin & Co As the art world peacocks betwixt the aisles, painter Eliza Douglas doubles down on her own aesthetic with a trio of new works featuring bright streaks that seem to refer back to the physical act of painting. Her imagery, rainbow-hued birds and disembodied legs and t-shirts, call to mind lost youth—or a time where Lisa Frank’s technicolor fare felt fresh. Following on the heels of a solo show at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, the skillfully executed paintings made us wonder when and where Douglas’s first New York solo show will arrive.
Tau Lewis | Cooper Cole A million faces seem to stare back when entering Tau Lewis’s installation with Cooper Cole. The artist has populated the floor of her solo booth with an entire family of strange rag dolls, whose bodies feel at once human and animalistic thanks to the materials she employs from denim and metal to leather and fur. With empty eyes, the slouching figures look up at the constructed ceiling overhead as if in mid-daydream. The repeating motif of ball-chains makes one think that perhaps Lewis’s characters are thinking about more than the blue skies overhead.
Bunny Rogers | Societe Bunny Rogers made our young artist list in 2016 for her Greenspon debut, “Columbine Cafeteria,” where the artist investigated the phenomena of the romantic fanfiction surrounding the 1999 mass school shooting. Since Rogers first began chasing this Gober-esque narrative, the story has evolved—transitioning into a kind of self-sustaining mythology (or monster) one that swallows up most of Societe's booth. The work picks up on the vocabulary of the artist’s 2017 Whitney solo show with a fence garnished with leafy air fresheners and a ladder colored with the milky shine of gel pens. Amidst the chaos on the sales floor and the unexpected heatwave, Rogers’s rungs to nowhere felt particularly cruel and beautiful.
