FOG Design+Art 2024: 5 Works to Look Out For

Lisa Yuskavage's Posing with Sunflowers (2023) at David Zwirner

American artist Lisa Yuskavage is celebrated for her paintings featuring sexualised, doll-like female figures set against acid-bright landscapes that exude both kitschiness and brazenness.

Posing with Sunflowers (2023) shows a curvaceous nude woman wearing high heels standing against a bright yellow backdrop. Teacup in hand, positioned beside a vase of sunflowers, the figure radiates joy through Yuskavage's use of warm yellow and orange tones. The woman, who appears to be smiling, gazes at viewers, her golden locks adding to the scene's vitality.

Speaking with Ocula Magazine in 2017, Yuskavage discussed her fascination with colour, contrast, and harmony. She remarked, 'I like the way that there is a kind of parallel in the language that we use [around colour]. Like a red and a pink or an orange and a red are more harmonious, whereas a red and a green are contrasting. The idea of contrasting meaning different, clashing—it has a kind of emotional resonance.'

Yuskavage's paintings, situated somewhere between the realms of lurid, amusing, and titillating, illustrate a captivating approach to contrasting colour, style, and subject matter.

Sonia Gomes' Untitled (Pendente series) | Sem título (série Pendente) (2023) at Pace Gallery

Contemporary sculptor Sonia Gomes frequently draws inspiration from her Afro-Brazilian heritage. Among the artist's references is the history and heritage of her hometown, Caetanópolis, a manufacturing hub for textiles in Brazil.

Employing an alchemical approach to her practice, Gomes transforms found or gifted materials into colourful, free-standing, or hanging assemblages.

In Untitled (Pendente series) | Sem título (série Pendente) (2023), textured fabrics are fused to form a hanging, amorphous assemblage, resembling a living, potentially growing thing. Bulbous shapes gather in clusters interwoven with patterned textiles symbolising the sculpture's skin.

Gomes is interested in the notion that skin can carry both collective and personal stories. Through her work, she suggests that every fabric has a unique history and memory—from its initial styling, through periods of storage and adjustment, until it finds its place in her studio.

Alex Prager's Twilight (2021) at Lehmann Maupin

Alex Prager's photograph, Twilight (2021), draws inspiration from the peculiar and isolating period defined by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The work portrays a solitary figure tumbling against a twilight sky, situated atop a mountain. The ambiguity of whether the subject is falling or flying adds an intriguing layer. Their face remains indistinguishable, obscured by their cowgirl outfit adorned with suede fringe.

Prager's theatrically staged photograph, noteworthy for its cinematic atmosphere, presents a palette of denim blue and warm sand-and-brown tones, reminiscent of colours seen in Western films.

This composition is part of the artist's series 'Part One: The Mountain' (2022), which captures the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in a unique and compelling way.

In a 2022 interview with the Financial Times, Prager explained, 'The idea of a mountain is of a primal place where we go when we are isolated and alone ... It is representative of the out-of-control reckoning of life and love during the past two years, which have been transformative for everyone I know.'

Eileen Agar's Still Life (1964) at Andrew Kreps Gallery

Eileen Agar led a life filled with vibrant cultural encounters, whether sharing ideas with her avant-garde social circle, dancing at Surrealist house parties alongside luminaries such as André Breton and Dylan Thomas, or her summer spent in the South of France with companions Lee Miller, Man Ray, and Pablo Picasso.

These rich experiences had a lasting impact on Agar, sparking her journey into experimentation with abstraction and surrealism.

In Still Life (1964), Agar explores shapes and colours through a composition of obscure objects and vases, some painted flatly and others embellished with foliage patterns. Against solid colour sections, the layering of distinct and ambiguous shapes subtly alludes to collage.

Agar's unique style, hovering between surreal and abstract, emerges through this interplay of forms, prompting a radical shift in perspective.

Andrew Kreps Gallery's presentation of Still Life at FOG Design+Art coincides with Agar's first major U.S. presentation, Flowering of A Wing, Works: 1936–1989 (12 January–10 February 2024), at the New York gallery's 22 Cortlandt Alley location.

Anicka Yi's Archaic Cusp (2023) at Gladstone Gallery

At first glance, Anicka Yi's Archaic Cusp (2023) resembles a giant, luminous larva.

Crafted from kelp, this sculpture presents an alien object, intermittently illuminated from within. The kelp material gives the illusion of nearly translucent skin, enticing viewers to approach and peer through, fuelling a curiosity to seek out what is hidden beneath its surface.

The presence of animatronic insects inside the sculpture generates flickering shadows and deepens the work's overall aura of ambiguity. This, in turn, prompts contemplation about the blurred boundaries between what might be animal, plant, and man-made within the work.

Known for creating installations that challenge the traditional boundaries between the natural and the artificial, Yi was awarded the 2020 Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern in London. Her presentation in the Turbine Hall featured floating pod creatures attracted to human heat.