Latest news with #FriezeNewYork
Observer
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
Miu Miu Brings a Show to New York, and Everyone Can Go
Since 2011, Miuccia Prada, the patron saint of smart, messy women everywhere, has been using her Miu Miu line as a platform to commission short films by female filmmakers from around the world, including Janicza Bravo, Mati Diop and Haifaa al-Mansour. For Prada, the films, which sometimes air during her fashion shows, serve as a backdrop to her clothes, which have always explored the chaotic lives of mothers, sisters, rebels, poets and punks without ever trying to reconcile their contradictions. That has made Miu Miu the darling of the fashion industry, the rare fashion brand to experience explosive growth at a time when sales in general are slowing. Last year, during Art Basel Paris, Prada decided it was time to bring all the films together, and she enlisted Polish artist Goshka Macuga to help. The result was an immersive performance piece of sorts that involved a cast of 35 characters from the films, brought to life by 105 actors. It was such an unexpected hit, with 11,000 people visiting the Paris show during its five-day run, that she and Macuga decided to re-create it this weekend for Frieze New York. The new show, titled 'Tales & Tellers,' is being staged in the Terminal Warehouse, the cavernous late-19th-century building on the Far West Side of Manhattan, latterly home to the Tunnel nightclub. And it is an altogether darker take on the state of women than the Paris event was. (Still, wardrobe by Miu Miu.) Prada and Macuga Zoomed in to explain. The conversation has been edited and condensed. Q: There hasn't been a Miu Miu show in New York in decades, but now there is. Sort of. Why this? MIUCCIA PRADA: The clothes are an excuse to have the support of the company to create these projects where women are talking about themselves, which is very important. In my work, I have always embraced the complexity of women, the complexity of our lives, how we can succeed in developing our abilities. So it's fundamental to know what women do, what they think, in different contexts. GOSHKA MACUGA: All these different stories represent different social problems for women in different countries. Like, for example, the film which I feel very close to, 'Nightwalk' by Małgorzata Szumowska, was filmed in Poland at a time when gender issues were really repressed by our government. It was talking about this idea of liberation within a context that was not sympathetic to difference. Q: That sounds like the current state of America. Is that why you wanted to bring the show here? PRADA: Not just America. Conservatism is everywhere in Europe. We are facing these really great problems, and this moment is really scary. So it's a very crucial argument — that everybody has the right to their voice. MACUGA: We are taking it to the American, or New York, street at night and trying to imagine how a woman exists within this context. It's more threatening, it's more surreal. We're looking at the concept of inside and outside, the idea of individuals coming together in a group and being empowered. How all these individual voices can come together and make a big impact. Q: Is this also the way you raise your voice? PRADA: It's hard for me to talk about politics because I am a representative of luxury. That's a very privileged group of people, so to translate that in a real democratic way is not obvious. So I try in my own way to be political, but I have to be very careful how I make it public. MACUGA: Artists can use language that allows certain narratives to still be present, but maybe present under the umbrella of a more coded language. You're not directly addressing anything or making a statement, but you're creating the possibility for people to project certain ideas into it. PRADA: What I hope is that people who come to the show feel they can express themselves — their ideas, their problems, their weakness, their struggle. We are basically saying that change or building relationships or empowerment happens on a human level, in the instantaneous relationships that we make with other people. Q: Why is that important now? MACUGA: Clearly we cannot take for granted certain positive things that happen for women in society. Governments change, politics change, and the situation of women changes with that. PRADA: Women's liberation is not concluded at all. Sometimes, it looks like we are going backward. There is still a lot of work to do. Q: Is that what you are trying to convey with clothes? PRADA: I try to make my contribution with the instrument I have. When you make clothes, you are suggesting possible ways of being. I am fixated on the word 'useful.' I want to try to be useful. Basically, I have the Prada Foundation, our museum. I have the fashion lines. And this is something in between that seems the most promising because it is simple. There's more excitement, less pressure, attached to it. Q: What do you mean? PRADA: First, when we made these little movies, no one cared one bit. We showed them at the Venice Film Festival, in a very serious environment. Then I wanted to do an exhibit at the Prada Foundation about feminism, but while curators are used to curating objects and art, there are no curators for ideas, so it's very difficult. But adding the fashion environment attracts many more people and allows this idea to become much more popular, much more diffused. Suddenly, with this, everybody immediately understood. It somehow accelerated the process, and we wanted to push that. This is one of the miracles of fashion.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Amid Political and Financial Turmoil, Frieze New York Kicks Off With With Robust Sales
After days of simultaneously damp and drizzly weather, Frieze New York opened its doors to a warm, bright, and energetic morning on Wednesday. Compared to last year's spring art week, this year's is especially jam-packed, with Frieze and TEFAF's US edition separated by just 24 hours instead of a week. And so, the sales floor was animated throughout the VIP day. On top of the bevy of fairs, there are a multitude of gallery shows, museum exhibitions, and art fairs opening or already on view this week. In a market where collectors are choosing to take things more slowly when it comes to spending their time—and their money—than in previous years, that is seemingly a good thing. More from Robb Report A 1930s San Francisco Home Lists for $19.5 Million With a Garden Apartment Bill Gates Will Give Away $200 Billion and Shutter His Foundation by 2045 Koenigsegg's Hypercar Just Set Two More Bonkers Speed Records But there's more in the air than talk about the market. The aisles buzzed with conversations of the financial and political state of the world. 'This week will set the tone for how the global market will behave in the coming months,' London-based adviser Arianne Piper told ARTnews. 'The unfortunate truth is that the political situation has disrupted that. It's not so much the current economic situation but the fear of the economic consequences of that situation.' That said, Piper added that the people who made it out to the Frieze on Wednesday are buying. 'It's not about the money. It's about the bandwidth.' Notably, Gagosian had a solo presentation of three sculptures by Jeff Koons, the artist's first collaboration since departing the mega-gallery's roster in 2021. This trio 'Hulk' works—Hulk (Organ), Hulk (Tubas), and Hulk (Dragon and Turtle)—came from Koons's personal collection and were installed in front of a custom vinyl backdrop, derived from his 2007 painting Triple Hulk Elvis III. 'The fair is off to a great start and the response to our booth has been phenomenal,' Gagosian senior director Millicent Wilner said in a statement, which noted that Hulk (Tubas) had already sold. When ARTnews asked about the price of each of the three mixed-media works, the gallery declined to comment, but well-places sources tell ARTnews that Hulk (Tubas) sold for $3 million. Thaddaeus Ropac, which currently has spaces in three European cities and Seoul, reported a strong start at Frieze New York, with a slower but more deliberate pace of sales despite strong attendance. 'People are taking their time and being really considered,' he said, adding that the gallery remains 'cautiously optimistic' about overall results. Early sales include Liza Lou's Zeugma (2024) for $225,000; Joan Snyder's mixed-media Float (2015) for $210,000; David Salle's Bow Tie (2024) for $130,000 to a US-based collector; a Martha Jungwirth painting for €85,000; and a Robert Longo drawing for $65,000. Two small works by Megan Rooney sold for £18,000 each, with a larger painting, priced at £75,000, currently on hold. Georg Baselitz's Motto: sexuelle Niete sagt Heidegger sagt Celan is also on reserve for €1 million. Pace Gallery kept things sharp at Frieze New York with a two-artist presentation pairing Adam Pendleton and Lynda Benglis. Pendleton himself curated the booth, which features four 'Black Dada' paintings from 2024 and two 'Movement' paintings from 2025. For her part, Benglis has six bronze sculptures, completed between 2021 and 2024, that play off Pendleton's canvases, showcasing their different approaches to abstraction. All six of Pendleton's paintings found buyers within the first couple of hours of the fair for between $165,000 and $425,000, while multiple works by Benglis sold for between $275,000 and $300,000. New York dealer Andrew Kreps described the first day of the fair as going 'really well' with great energy for Jes Fan's 2023 sculpture Cross Section (Right Leg Muscle II) selling for $26,000; Harold Stevenson's 1967 painting Untitled (Hand sign language) going for $70,000; and Hadi Falapishi's Professional Painter in a Dream (2025) for $25,000. The gallery also sold four editions of Roe Ethridge's UV-cured pigment print, Ranunculus in Copper Pot at Hermes, 24 rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré Rooftop (2023), for $16,000 each, and Ernie Barnes's 1995 Study II for The Dream Unfolds was also on hold. Interest came 'across the board,' Kreps said, primarily from collectors in New York and Miami. When ARTnews asked if he was concerned about sales at Frieze during what many consider a cooling interest in contemporary art, Kreps replied that it helped that his prices were in the low-to-mid range. 'Today, I felt there would be a lot of enthusiasm, and I think people are wanting to get out there and think about art,' he told ARTnews For its booth, Casey Kaplan Gallery had a solo presentation of glass and stainless steel sculptures by Hannah Levy, with several works, priced between $45,000 and $80,000, selling to US-based collectors during the first day. 'It's been good energy,' senior director Emily Epelbaum-Bush told ARTnews, noting new collectors and curators dropping by the booth. 'We've seen people we haven't seen in some time. We're really excited about the beginning of the fair.' Goodman Gallery, which has locations in Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as New York and London, had a group display highlighting artists who have had important international spotlights over the past year. A large-scale painting by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, fresh from her solo exhibition last year at the Barbican in London, sold for $90,000 to 'a seminal New York collection,' the gallery said. Additionally, a work by Carrie Mae Weems, from her 2021 series 'Painting the Town,' sold for $100,000 to a Dutch collector. Both works were sold with the promise that they would be donated to institutions in the future, according to the gallery. Their presentation also includes works by William Kentridge, Shirin Neshat, and Ravelle Pillay, alongside new pieces by Yinka Shonibare and Kapwani Kiwanga. 'Obviously, you know, it's an intriguing time to be in the United States—if not the world,' said Anthony Dawson, director of the gallery's Cape Town location. 'It's wonderful to see that people are still so committed to the production of contemporary art.' Karma also reported a successful first day at Frieze New York, led by the $350,000 sale of Owl for Emil (1958), a modestly sized painting by Gertrude Abercrombie, who is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Other noteworthy sales include Richard Mayhew's Mountain Mindscape (1969) for $350,000, Manoucher Yektai's Blue Table (1960) for $275,000, and Reggie Burrows Hodges's Referees: To The House (2021) for $175,000. Tina Kim, who brought to the fair a range of works from the women artists in their program, sold works by Lee ShinJa, Ghada Amer, Pacita Abad, and Suki Seokyeong Kang for between $80,000 and $200,000. It's not surprising that there was a great deal of interest in the future of Frieze, which as of last week has a new owner (if only tangentially). Earlier this month, Endeavor Group Holdings sold Frieze, along with its magazine and global portfolio of fairs, to its Ari Emmanuel, Endeavor's former CEO, and a consortium of investors for a reported $200 million. That sale was the spark of speculation among more than a handful of VIP day attendees, though few were willing to speculate or give Frieze's new owners advice. 'There's an opportunity here, to really increase the revenue stream and come up with a new, innovative business model,' author and art market observer Magnus Resch told ARTnews. 'The simple business model of real estate arbitrage isn't working anymore. You can't just open new locations.' For Resch, the future of art fairs would involve variable pricing models for the galleries that participate and an expanded offering: watches and collectibles, something Resch admits might alienate existing patrons. He added, 'Frieze has a chance to become the leading player in the art world. They just have to stop living in the past.' Best of Robb Report The 10 Priciest Neighborhoods in America (And How They Got to Be That Way) In Pictures: Most Expensive Properties Click here to read the full article.
Vogue
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
From the East Village Scene to the Frieze Art Fair—Tabboo! Is a New York Voice Worth Listening to, Now More Than Ever
It's been a huge week for cultural institutions in New York. Following Monday's Met Gala, Frieze New York kicked off yesterday at The Shed with a showcase featuring some 65 of the world's It-galleries from over 20 countries. That's one impressive factoid, though it's the deep cuts, I find, that matter most. Elusive Moon, a piece by the New York legend and jack of all (mostly gay) trades Tabboo! is one of these deep cuts. It's on display as part of Karma gallery's showcase at the art fair. 'I've been painting the moon my whole life, really,' the artist, illustrator, puppeteer, and former performer says over the phone in the weeks leading up to Frieze, his voice tinged with a touch of melancholy. 'It's a moon peaking out behind some clouds, abstract but with bold, bright colors,' he explains. 'People like blue paintings, they can live with blue.' Tabboo!, Portrait by Clayton Patterson, 1986 Courtesy of Karma and Gordon Robichaux Tabboo!, Door of Pyramid Club, New York, NY, Arabian Nights, 1985 Courtesy of Karma and Gordon Robichaux Although he was talking about interior design, Tabboo! has always had a knack for capturing the collective mood in simple terms. It's a topsy-turvy world, and most of us can't help but feel the blues from time to time. But we learn to live with them, as has Tabboo! Born Stephen Tashjian, Tabboo! has used this stage name since he broke into the drag scene in the '80s. He's now known mostly for his beautifully emotive site-scapes, which aptly and eloquently depict New York through its many seasons and stages. But it's his illustration work, which appeared in influential indie magazines like Interview and illustrated album covers for artists like Deee-Lite through the '80s and '90s, that made him a queer icon. That and his performances as a go-go boy and in drag at legendary venues like Palladium and Pyramid Club. In late February, I spent the weekend at a friend's home in Hudson, New York, which has become something of a gay enclave north of the city. One evening, the 'gaggle of gays' that we coined ourselves turned on Wigstock: The Movie. The 1995 film documents the previous year's edition of Wigstock, the now-extinct annual drag festival that was held in Tompkins Square Park through much of the '80s and '90s. The film spotlights performances by RuPaul, Deee-Lite, Debbie Harry, Leigh Bowery, Joey Arias, and Tabboo!, among others. It's older than I am, ever so slightly, which means most of the folks in my group had never seen it. We decided to turn the evening into a teaching moment—gays my age tend to have a nebulous understanding of the lives the Tabboo!s and RuPauls lived back then, and this film juxtaposes both the joys and struggles of queerness. AIDS had decimated the community by then. Now, we now have PrEP and are seemingly not angry—or motivated—enough to react to the ways our rights are being threatened. Tabboo! Wigstock Backdrop, 1990 Courtesy of Karma and Gordon Robichaux
New York Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Frieze New York Is Smaller but Still Packs a Global Punch
Visiting Frieze New York used to include a frisson of danger amid acres of great art. Held in a quarter-mile-long tent on Randall's Island, the New York edition of the art fair that appears on three continents offered world-class vistas of Manhattan as well as the threat of squalls that could flood the exhibits or fears that the big tent might take off like a kite in high winds. Not anymore. For the fifth year, Frieze New York, which runs through Sunday, is anchored firmly in the Shed, the bunkerlike building in Hudson Yards. There's less art here than in the old days — 67 galleries, compared with nearly 200 booths in 2019 — but also less distraction. As art fairs have proliferated, it's refreshing to find Frieze New York still presenting work that is brash or downright risky, along with elements of the resolutely blue-chip TEFAF on Park Avenue and the cool midlevel Independent in TriBeCa. While art tourists can always gorge locally on art — for example, TriBeCa Gallery Night on Friday offers more than 70 participating galleries and art spaces — Frieze is a chance to travel through the global art world without leaving Manhattan. Here are a handful of booths that show you what art still has the capacity to do. The London gallerist Victoria Miro is showing a handful of in-your-face artists who are not (or were not) afraid to speak their minds. Chief among them is the glorious Grayson Perry, a Turner Prize winner and cross-dressing potter who also wrote an iconoclastic autobiography titled 'Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl' (2007). On display here is a tapestry, 'Fascist Swing' (2021), which remakes Fragonard's randy Rococo painting of cavorting lovers, and hulking ceramic vessels with provocative slogans like 'Free Speech is Hate Speech' inscribed in them. Along with Perry's works are figurative paintings by formidable female painters like Alice Neel and Paula Rego. On the same floor, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, which has outposts in Brooklyn and San Francisco, has an exhilarating display of paintings by Esther Mahlangu, a member of the Ndebele people of South Africa. Mahlangu's abstract geometric canvases were made with a chicken-feather brush. Although they look much like paintings by European modernists and have been showcased in big exhibitions at the Pompidou in Paris and Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany, in 1992, the paintings draw on community values and even prayers. The Brazilian gallery A Gentil Carioca is showing three artists whose work highlights the earth — but through the filter of political, social and environmental concerns. Denilson Baniwa's watercolor and graphite on tururi (a natural vegetable fiber) celebrates Indigenous cosmologies, while Maria Nepomuceno makes sculptures with straw, beads, wood and ceramics drawn from Indigenous artisanal traditions. Kelton Campos Fausto paints with natural pigments on linen, showcasing Yoruba spiritual guides and clay vessels. In the Focus section of the fair, which features emerging and younger galleries, South Korea's G Gallery is a standout with its presentation of the Korean-born, New York-based artist Yehwan Song. For her installation, Song created a faceted cardboard armature and projected video onto it. Titled 'Internet Barnacles' (2025), the booth-size work points to how water serves as a constant metaphor for digital activities ('surfing' the internet; 'streaming,' 'cloud'). If water seems anathema to digital processing, the use of cardboard serves as an antidote to the hard plastic, metal and minerals required to make the digital realm flow. Painting is the fuel that generally runs art fairs, and Frieze is filled with plenty of it. The Chicago gallery Gray, which has an impressive display, is hosting two painters: the Michigan-based Judy Ledgerwood and the Oklahoma-born Leon Polk Smith (1906-1996). Smith was inspired by the primary colors of Mondrian and the curvaceous geometries of Brancusi and Jean Arp. His hard-edge abstractions are complemented here by Ledgerwood's playful compositions that draw from folk art — perhaps even wallpaper or fabric designs — as well as the lineage of modern abstraction. From Los Angeles, Night Gallery is showing the Canadian artist Wanda Koop's 'Plywood Paintings' from 1981 to 1990. (In addition to her work as an artist, Koop also founded Art City, a free community art center in Winnipeg.) A couple of her large grayscale paintings, which look almost abstract, actually depict satellite dishes on buildings. Other paintings feature stark landscapes or a swan stranded in a pink ground. There is a spareness to Koop's paintings, but also a strong material presence, with buildings and trees carved out of chunky brushstrokes applied to heavy wooden panels. I saw Malo Chapuy's paintings earlier this year in Mor Charpentier's Paris gallery, and they were an excellent complement to an extraordinary historical exhibition: 'Figures of the Fool: From the Middle Ages to the Romantics' at the Louvre, which explored how this tragicomic character prefigured modern humans and their existential condition. Chapuy recreates religious compositions from the Middle Ages and borrows old techniques, as well, including wooden panels and gold leaf and hand-carved frames — and then inserts modern-day objects into the mix. Gas masks and wind farms appear among the donors, saints and fools. What might read as a gimmick gains gravity when you ponder the connections between past and present politics, religions, wars, superstitions and so on. Fairs are very much for-profit ventures (sadly, what isn't these days in the art world), but two nonprofit initiatives at Frieze deserve mention. The Artist Plate Project, founded to benefit the Coalition for the Homeless, features editions of dinner plates with images by famous artists, living and dead, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Sanford Biggers, Cindy Sherman and Jackson Pollock. For $250, you can help homeless people — and it's probably the most affordable way of being a shopper rather than a browser at Frieze. The other initiative, 'Incomplete* Listing,' compiled by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School includes a detailed list and map of 84 freely accessible reading spaces in New York. Some, like the Brooklyn Public Library, are more obvious. Others are lesser known, like the Library of the Printed Web at MoMA, the Morbid Anatomy Library & Giftshop or Wendy's Subway, a reading room, writing space and independent publisher in Bushwick. But they might be good places to commune with art-and-idea-minded people when the rush of Frieze week subsides.
New York Times
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Frieze New York Couldn't Happen Without Scores of People Behind the Scenes
The spotlight at Frieze New York is usually on the paintings, sculptures and other artworks displayed around the city. Artists, the gallery owners who represent them and the glittery parties related to the fair also get their share of attention. But Frieze wouldn't happen without the contingent of people who work in the background to help bring it to fruition. Christine Messineo, the director of Frieze New York and Los Angeles, said the fair employs more than 130 temporary and full-time employees, across a dozen departments. They include production staff members, handlers who install the artworks, electricians, security guards and guest relations members. 'No one thinks about them, but they're essential to the look and execution of the fair,' Messineo said. 'I see many of them year after year and highly depend on them.'
