Frieze New York 2023: 8 Advisory Selections

1. Roe Ethridge's Silver Plate with Ice Cream (2017–2023) at Andrew Kreps Gallery

Roe Ethridge's photographs feel at once universal and intimate.

Ice cream melts on a gleaming silver platter in his photograph Silver Plate with Ice Cream (2017–2023).

Ethridge only grants us a glimpse of the scene, stirring our curiosity. Whose plate is this? Where was the photo taken? And why does something feel not quite right?

The photograph speaks to Ethridge's dual roles as a commercial photographer and an artist.

2. Lucia Laguna's Paisagem nº140 (2023) at Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel

Best known for her vibrant reimaginings of her local neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro, 81-year-old Lucia Laguna is still finding fresh ways to paint her surroundings.

In her painting Paisagem nº 140 (2023), lush foliage emerges around earthy, angular forms of what appear to be apartment buildings.

Laguna merges representational forms with segments of geometric abstractions. Flora, fauna, fragments of blue sky, and architectural structures appear in tropical colours of fiery reds and emerald greens.

The Brazilian artist's first solo exhibition in the U.K. took place at Sadie Coles HQ in London in 2022, where she presented a new group of paintings.

3. Jack Whitten's Untitled (1976) at Hauser & Wirth

Composed of fine lines, Jack Whitten's methodically planned abstract painting is intensely personal in its experimentation with the rhythms of gestural abstraction.

At Frieze New York, Hauser & Wirth presents a solo booth celebrating the life's work of the American artist, who died in 2018.

The presentation will feature work from his early career, stretching back to the 1960s, along with his last works, which were made in the 2010s.

4. Danh Vō's untitled (2022) at kurimanzutto

Witness the crucifixion of Jesus depicted in Danh Vō's bronze sculpture untitled (2022). Outwardly satirical, Vō's suspension of Christ is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on his Catholic upbringing.

The Vietnamese-born artist is known for his conceptual practice, which investigates experiences of migration, integration, and cultural values.

In untitled (2022), Vō connects the ancient with the contemporary. Gilded in gold, the 16th-century figurine parodies the seduction and violence of Catholicism. The figure is broken, fragmented, and antiquated, yet its glimmering veneer suggests splendour and modernity.

Vō's appearance in kurimanzutto's Frieze New York presentation follows his recent installation Tropeaolum (2023), a greenhouse made from concrete, metal, and stone investigating various narratives of displacement and expansionism.

The installation was commissioned for Before the Storm (8 February–11 September 2023), an exhibition of new installations from the Pinault Collection at the Rotunda at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris.

5. Cildo Meireles' Sem título (1977) at Galeria Luisa Strina

Both geometric and expressive, Sem título (1977) demonstrates Cildo Meireles' interest in reimagining urban scenes from his homeland, Brazil.

Meireles made the work when he was living in Planaltina, just outside the city of Brasília, after finding inspiration in the paradoxes of his local landscape. Using imagery suggestive of urban architecture and the emptiness that permeates them, Meireles' composition probes themes of construction and crisis, control and chaos.

Meireles' refined colour palette and use of simple forms mimic the geometry of Planaltina. The painting is based on a photograph taken by Brazilian artist Luiz Alphonsus in 1965.

Galeria Luisa Strina will present Meireles' work alongside artists Robert Rauschenberg, Anna Maria Maiolino, and Pedro Reyes, among others.

6. Henni Alftan's Fur III (2022) at Karma

The lapels of a jaguar-print coat dominate Henni Alftan's Fur III (2022). The sharply cropped coat features deep yellows in brushwork that mimics the fuzzy texture of fur against a moody blue background.

A master of tone, Alftan's painting offers a fragment of a quiet moment from her life. Her composition draws attention to pictorial representation and the way we consider the fundamentals of texture, colour, flatness, surface, and framing.

'Images trigger us just as much as words,' Alftan explained to Ocula Advisory in March 2023. 'They work on us and that's why it's important that I sketch them from memory. It brings an ambiguity to the images that makes you feel that you could have already seen them.'

Alftan's flair for flattened subjects and pops of colour is reminiscent of American artist Alex Katz. Karma's booth will feature Fur III alongside two other paintings by Alftan, The Next Day (2021) and Smile (2021).

7. Rachel Eulena Williams' Watered down, kind expressions (2023) at The Modern Institute

Born in 1991, Rachel Eulena Williams has successfully married sculpture and painting.

A magnificent web of colours and textures, Watered down, kind expressions (2023) demonstrates Williams' intuitive and experimental use of materials.

The finished work is the result of materials such as cotton, rope, nylon thread, and wood being torn, woven, threaded, or glued together in a tangle of colour cemented onto a cotton canvas.

Intended to explore unconventional material usage, Williams' large-scale assemblage recalls flowers floating down a current-heavy body of water.

8. Chantal Joffe's Love Letter 3 (2023) at Victoria Miro

Based in London, Chantal Joffe has a way with paint that offers up the many faceted emotions of her subjects. Her nuanced portraits capture the agonies, ecstasies, and vulnerabilities of contemporary life.

Love Letter 3 (2023) depicts an instance of calm, onto which a cerulean-tinged palette introduces an air of melancholy.

Joffe envisions her partially nude figure using flat wedges of soft pink brushwork and broken outlines in blue.

The detail of the subject's crooked toes and almost translucent skin tone gives the work a sense of lived experience—Joffe has seen, observed, and recorded these very real human qualities.