Frieze London 2023: Six Paintings to Spend Time With
Frieze London returns to Regents Park for its most international edition yet. Celebrating 20 years since its launch in 2003, the contemporary art fair takes place from 11 to 15 October 2023.
Expect to see blue-chip galleries including Almine Rech, Gagosian, and Sadie Coles HQ alongside first time participants such as Ginny on Frederick and Harlesden High Street.
We've selected six paintings worth spending some time with, including Hayley Barker's dreamlike landscape at Ingleby Gallery, John Maclean's contemplative watercolour at The Approach, Pam Evelyn's expansive abstract at Pace Gallery, and Tomasz Kręcicki's closeup oil painting at Esther Schipper.
1. Danielle McKinney's Shut Eye (2023) at Marianne Boesky
Starting with an all black canvas, Danielle Mckinney lifts her Black female protagonists from the shadows with a stark intimacy capturing those moments of recline and private reflection that we so crave.
Captured with an acute female gaze, her languid figures and dim-lit frames are punctuated with moments of light—the flicker of a lit cigarette or the brilliance of neon nail paint.
Marianne Boesky Gallery brings a solo presentation of Mckinney's work to London—a sure-fire vote of confidence for the Jersey City-based artist who only took up painting full-time over Covid-19.
Since then, with representation from Marianne Boesky as well as L.A.-based Night Gallery, Mckinney has enjoyed a run of solo exhibitions in the States. Subsequently, her brooding paintings have already found themselves in the collections of numerous U.S. museums including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. and the Dallas Museum of Art.
2. John Maclean's Woods (2023) at The Approach
Like Mckinney's, John Mclean's painting career went full steam ahead over the Covid-19 lockdown. Although trained at London's Royal College of Art in the 1990s under British painters Chris Ofili and Peter Doig, the Scottish artist went down a different path, choosing a career in music and film.
With the pandemic putting a halt on filming, Maclean turned to painting 20 years after graduating art school. Like his films, his small 30 x 22 cm paintings place landscapes as the protagonist, capturing rolling hills and drawn out vistas.
Notable is his process, where he thickly applies watercolour to a flat-lying wooden board. On doing this, Maclean repeatedly sands down and reapplies layers of the paint until he falls upon his final frame.
Over at their gallery in Bethnal Green, East London, Maclean has a solo exhibition titled New Paintings: Part I (14 September–28 October 2023). It's a continuation of the body of work he produced for his solo show The Annexe (14 January–18 February 2023) at the gallery earlier this year.
3. Hayley Barker's Lemon-Scented Gum (2023) at Ingleby Gallery
The care that Hayley Barker takes with each exquisitely rendered leaf, root, and knot in Lemon-Scented Gum (2023) will beckon crowds from across the tent in Regent's Park next week.
Standing at nearly two-and-a-half metres-tall, the oil on linen painting with its fastidious workings and fine brush marks conjures a dreamlike landscape. Yet, her paintings are very much rendered from life and her surroundings—views from her bedroom window, meandering pathways through gardens, and trees she's grown up living around.
Rather than applying thick, wet paint, Barker uses a dry brush on raw linen to apply a thin layers of opaque colour. She leaves parts of the brown linen bare resulting in a textural, almost mosaic, finish.
Barker is set to have her first exhibition in Europe at Ingleby in Edinburgh in 2024.
4. John Hoyland's New York II (1970) at Hales Gallery
Known for his incredibly vibrant and daring paintings, John Hoyland placed the communication of feeling—a charge of visual, mental and emotional energy—as the driving force behind his creative practice.
Hales Gallery brings the late artist's painting, New York II (1970) to Frieze London this autumn. The expressive impact of this painting emanates from its unwavering charge of brilliant red and its rich layering of dripped and drizzled form.
A work from his New York days, the painting illustrates the British artist's free-flowing approach to making art. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his style diversified by adopting a wider range of shapes and embracing the unusual textures that emerged from his use of thick impasto.
5. Pam Evelyn's Submarine Mine (2023) at Pace Gallery
Pam Evelyn, who joined Pace Gallery's programme in July 2023, brings her complexly textured abstract painting to Frieze London this year.
Composed of entanglements of fluid line and rich colour, Submarine Mine (2023) exemplifies how Evelyn's practice is deeply rooted in instinct and impulse. Bold blue and black strokes recede into the background, while flashes of green, yellow, and pink emerge to reveal visceral gestures.
The British artist enjoyed her debut solo exhibition, Handful of Dust (6–30 September 2023), with Pace Gallery last month, where she unveiled a selection of new large-scale paintings.
Evelyn is the youngest artist on Pace's extremely strong roster.
6. Tomasz Kręcicki's Gel (2023) at Esther Schipper
Interested in scale and the human form, Tomasz Kręcicki creates paintings that explore the possibilities of abstraction in figurative art.
Gel (2023) depicts enlarged fingers applying gel. Withholding who is applying the mysterious gel and for what reason, the painting feels dreamlike and slightly absurd. This peculiar tone is exemplified by the fluorescent pink shade enveloping Kręcicki's painting.
The Polish artist's manipulation of the mundane and alteration of scale elicits a sense of unease and apprehension.
Kręcicki's cryptic narratives have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, and Antwerp.
His work will feature alongside artists Ugo Rondinone, Ryan Gander, and Isa Melsheimer, among others at Esther Schipper's booth.
Main image: John Hoyland, New York II (1970). Acrylic on canvas. 63.2 x 101.7 x 2 cm. Framed: 65.8 x 104.5 x 3.2 cm. Image courtesy the Artist and Hales Gallery. © John Hoyland. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2023.
