Remember the days when Frieze New York, one of the core art events of the May season, used to feature nearly 200 galleries? Those days weren’t so long ago—just six years in the past—but it feels as though an eternity separates pre-pandemic Frieze New York from post-pandemic Frieze New York. The fair is now an entirely different animal—a more manageable one.
Since 2021, the fair has taken place in the Shed, the Hudson Yards arts center, and has occurred in a scaled-back form, with roughly a quarter of the exhibitors who showed at the fair in years prior. Frieze’s Shed iterations have been clunky and uneven, but the Frieze’s fourth go-around here, which opened to VIPs on Wednesday, is stronger than its predecessors.
Frieze has yet to recapture the energy that surrounded prior editions held on a tent on Randall’s Island, and it is, after all, a fair—a selling event, and therefore not the best to place to see art. Yet you can at least breeze through it quickly and find some good presentations along the way (if you’re willing to pay the towering general admission fee of at least $75, that is).
Yes, there is no shortage of loud, bland art. (Yes, I’m talking about the garish Jeff Koons Hulk sculptures at Gagosian.) But thankfully, the majority of what’s here couldn’t be described that way. Stately abstract painting and sophisticated fiber art can be found aplenty, just as they can currently in many of the city’s museums and galleries. There’s also a good deal of art that rewards close viewing, especially in the fair’s Focus section for presentations of work by emerging and under-recognized artists.
What art merits your time? Below, a look at seven of Frieze New York’s best booths.
Korean Fiber Art at Tina Kim Gallery
With fiber art fast emerging as the medium of the season here in New York, it can be no surprise that weavings and textile art abound at Frieze. Some of the most compelling examples can be found at Tina Kim’s booth, which is devoted mainly to artists hailing from South Korea. The stand functions as a memorial of sorts to Suki Seokyeong Kang, who died last month at 48; she was known for utilizing hwamunseok mats, one of which appears here as the unlikely background to an abstraction formed from steel bars. Lee ShinJa, a nonagenarian soon to be the subject of her first US survey at the Berkeley Art Museum, is also here, represented by the glorious Growth (1980s), a hanging tapestry in which planes of brown and beige refract through each other. Kang and Lee are joined by a much younger artist, the sculptor Mire Lee, who is showing pieces of soft fabric made hard and crusty via clay slip. Hung in frames, Lee’s tattered fabrics look as though they are being worn by ghosts.
—Alex Greenberger
