Frieze London 2022: 7 Directors Introduce Their Booths

Frieze returns to London from 12–16 October. Take an early look at some wonderful works appearing in the booths of Blindspot, Experimenter, Kavi Gupta, Lisson, OMR, Silverlens, and Victoria Miro.

Kerstin Erdmann, Partner at OMR, Mexico City

Our presentation includes core gallery artists such as Jose Dávila and Gabriel Rico as well as new artists to our roster, such as Chilean filmmaker and painter Sebastian Silva and Spanish artist Ana Montiel.

New paintings and sculptures by Jose Dávila (which were conceived for his solo exhibition at Zurich's Museum Haus Konstruktiv) are anchors for the presentation. His strong visual theme of appropriation is key as he approaches the styles of Sonia Delaunay, Hilma af Klint, Frank Stella, and even Marcel Duchamp as seen with Objet du voyageur (The traveller's item) (2021).

Eduardo Sarabia's large-format, photorealistic oil paintings are another highlight of the booth. Based on personal photographs the artist had lying around the studio, the paintings are lushly rendered, yet covered with daubs of colours, obscuring the view and thus making the background image nearly unreadable.

Louise Hayward, Senior Director at Lisson Gallery, London

Laure Prouvost is presenting a multi-sensory, participatory environment with paintings, sculptures, films, and even protest banners in her typically playful yet subtly political way.

Beyond the enclosure created by the freestanding paintings is a large-scale tapestry on the back wall of the booth entitled I wish you could see my face (2020), which is based on Prouvost's film Monolog (2009), also on show at the booth.

The film, and tapestry, includes imagery of overlapping arms enveloping a bright star and galloping horses. The film addresses the fallibility of language, interweaving excerpts of footage, voiceover, and text in a surreal and witty parody that challenges the notion of identity and institutional norms.

Alongside the fair, Prouvost is presenting a public commission with CIRCA in Piccadilly Circus. The commission brings an octopus to life on the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain through augmented reality, and presents a new video work across the outdoor screens.

The octopus is also a leading character in the booth, a creature whose organs are located in her tentacles, so she thinks by feeling and feels by thinking. As she does not contain capacity for memory, she encourages us to forget what we know and focus on the present experience.

Prateek and Priyanka Raja, Founders of Experimenter, Kolkata

Our Frieze London stand is anchored to the body as an emotive force and a register for exploration of relationships and sexuality, physical, and spatial form, politics of resistance and protest, and a conceptual field for multiple coexisting forces.

We present a body of work by Prabhakar Pachpute that is part of Indira's Net, an incredible fair-wide exhibition curated by Sandhini Poddar that explores the body as a site of resistance.

For the first time, we also present Alexandra Bachzetsis' politically and sexually charged work Chasing a Ghost, which draws from histories of art, music, cinema, popular culture and fashion, and projects them onto the body. Through this method of citation, Bachzetsis considers how our bodies are used and can be activated in today's increasingly polarising discussions around identity and body politics.

We also present Radhika Khimji's recent works and drawings and prints by Krishna Reddy from the '60s and '70s. Separated by over five decades, these works are intricately connected in their exploration of form, space, and perception of the body.

Chanelle Lacy, Director at Kavi Gupta, Chicago

We'd love to spotlight the work of Arghavan Khosravi, an Iranian artist currently based in the U.S. In addition to the visually stunning aesthetic achievements evident in her multi-dimensional paintings, Arghavan is working with the core issues that are driving the current push for social reform in Iran. She's looking back at Persian art history and critiquing the powerful, intergenerational visual signifiers echoing through Iran's past that continue to affect attitudes towards women in Iranian culture today.

We'd also love to highlight the new paintings we're bringing by Manuel Mathieu, a Haitian-born artist based in Montreal. These paintings are so visually and materially impactful—viewers have a visceral reaction to their surfaces and to Manuel's sensual, painterly handling of his mediums. Manuel's deep personal connection to Haitian art history comes through in his visual language, which mutates between pure abstraction, naturalism, and a sense that everything is spirit.

Nick Yu, Associate Director at Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong

The piece de resistance of our booth is Trevor Yeung's Between Water, a minimalist installation that will take over the whole booth. In an orderly grid of 5 x 5, plastic cups half filled with water are suspended from the ceiling at eye level. Each cup is separated from the next by the distance you'd expect of two strangers engaged in a polite interaction.

In order to approach the other works in the booth, viewers must navigate through this matrix, being mindful not to knock over the water. This work is very much about the invisible structures that govern social interactions. It's an inquiry into the policies of social distancing, quarantines, and lockdowns we have endured over the course of the pandemic.

Another work of note is the cacti, which are actually puffer fish in disguise. One of Yeung's most iconic series, it speaks to an ambiguous zone between perception and identification. Yeung's works have this deceptively simple quality of playfulness to them.

Victoria Miro, Founder of Victoria Miro, London

We are featuring a special presentation in tribute to Paula Rego, who died in June at the age of 87.

The works on view are among the last large-scale pastels completed by the artist. They are free and full of life, and blend autobiographical elements, folk tales, and other stories.

Rachel Rillo, Co-director at Silverlens, Manila

We will be presenting a large video by Martha Atienza entitled Tigpanalipod (1) 11°02'06.4"N 123°36'24 (2022). It follows a fisherman around Mambacayao Daku, an island in the Philippines that has been home to fisherfolk for generations.

As tourism is pushed forth, these fisherfolk are forcibly relocated to public and private housing projects by landed elites and the government, thereby losing access to their coastal homes. Atienza's work challenges the imposition on these island communities.

This video will be projected on the entire back wall of the booth, making the fisherman, the boat, and the island behind him feel much closer to the viewers. With this imposing scale, I hope that viewers are reminded of how real these concerns are, about not just the environment, but also of labour and governance. —[O]