Sunday, December 8, 2024

Hiji Nam on Frieze week in New York

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A work from Scott Lyall’s “Talents” series, at Miguel Abreu’s booth at Frieze. All photos by author.

A piece from Scott Lyall’s “Skills” collection, at Miguel Abreu’s sales space at Frieze. All images by writer.

LAST THURSDAY AFTERNOON, I waded via the throngs of vacationers across the Vessel to fulfill my pal Anya Komar on the Shed for Frieze. Komar, previously a long-time director and gallery companion of Miguel Abreu (she now runs Ulrik, in Chelsea), remembered how the honest at Randall’s Island at all times appeared on the point of collapse—leaky ceilings, sweat, and damaged ACs that remodeled showrooms into saunas. No such discharge or human frailty at Hudson Yards; though the title of Frieze’s newish location suggests a messy outbuilding to retailer unused toys or dusty childhood trophies (OK, possibly not such a foul description for artwork), the $475 million Shed stays seamless and sealed off, designed to eradicate any hint of the unconscious. 

Following what some gallerists described because the “zoo” that had been the Wednesday preview, Thursday felt sedate. Gagosian and Tempo had apparently bought out their cubicles by the second day, and a palpable fatigue had begun to set in. Miguel Abreu was exhibiting Scott Lyall’s new collection of polychrome wall items, “Skills,” made with compressed sheets of mirror and glass printed with a definite wavelength of pixels and nanoparticles of gold. Reflective and muted, the surfaces made all the things inside their frames appear like a hazy Gerhard Richter portray.

“Monochrome and the mirror,” declared Miguel. “The 2 foundations of up to date artwork.”

Afterwards, we headed to the Excessive Line for the revealing of the city park’s third “Plinth” fee, Pamela Rosenkratz’s Outdated Tree, 2023, a fairly grisly, hot-pink sapling of a sculpture that was being fêted with whimsical pink parfaits and popsicles, contemporary strawberry cocktails, and rose-flavored cotton sweet on precise twigs. A DJ tried to awaken the company with dance music, however the chilly wind that day stored individuals huddled collectively for heat. I heard somebody questioning aloud the place the Artforum diary on Frieze was. Someone else was saying, “Did you see the Whitney ISP present final night time? The artwork was so anxious, anxious about artwork’s irrelevance and wanting it to do one thing. Somebody had caught some IRS tax paperwork on a wall. I like Frieze, I like gala’s—the commerce, the cash.”


Pamela Rosenkranz’s Old Tree at the High Line.

Pamela Rosenkranz’s Outdated Tree on the Excessive Line.

In the meantime, in Chinatown, there was an occasion for No Company (the “art-adjacent modeling company that indicators non-models discovered at native bars”), in addition to a gap of Sven Loven’s internet-adjacent work at No Gallery. “Humiliation Ritual” options perverted portraits of Dean Kissick, Emily Sundblad, Siyuan Zhao (the lady who stabbed somebody at Artwork Basel Miami in 2015), and a winged Peter Thiel (Peter Thiel Angel Twink)—think about if Sound-Cloud rap was made out of canvas and crossed with the satanic uncanny of Twin Peaks season three. The press launch, concerning the “full infatuation with the signal” via the lens of ‘the pseudo-avant-garde’ of up to date downtown tradition,” all felt true sufficient, however the trolliness of the accompanying fan-fic exhibition textual content (on the demonic, schizophrenic “Spirit-That-Possessed-Valerie Solanas-and-Compelled-Her-to-Shoot-Andy-Warhol” that in flip possessed Zhao) gave me the creeps.

On Friday, I dipped into Reena Spaulings for his or her Frieze-week group present with New Yorker editorial staffer Dennis Zhou. Fittingly, the theme of the journal’s upcoming summer time fiction concern is “Dwelling It Up,” aka events. He’d lately met with a Korean novelist to ask her to contribute; she’d wanted clarification on the English idiom, and ultimately demurred, explaining that she doesn’t go to events. I, then again, adore their somatic theater and their potential to rearrange the standard rhythmic ordering of my conscious-unconscious life—the lights, the music, the psychodrama. We had extra of that in retailer upon arriving at Saint Peter’s Church in Midtown, the place Lucia della Paolera had produced (and stars in) a Bach- and Handel-infused operatic manufacturing with music by Gobby on trumpet and Esther Sibiude on harp, amongst many others. Spirit and soul develop into confused / once they take into account you, my God . . . and the individuals shout with pleasure / have made them deaf and dumb . . . Spirit and soul develop into confused. From there I headed again downtown for a Frieze get together at collector Paul Leong’s condo, the place artists Julien Ceccaldi, artwork adviser Rob McKenzie, Matt Sova, and Anya have been having a mellow drink earlier than migrating to the Scratcher, the place the Reena afterparty and Felix Bernstein birthday drinks went till late, whereas others moved on to get together for indie-sleaze revivalist The Dare (“Intercourse,” “Ladies”) at Public Resorts.


Lucia della Paolera’s opera at Saint Peter’s Church.

Lucia della Paolera’s opera at Saint Peter’s Church.

On Saturday night, I made my first go to to The Gap’s TriBeCa gallery, the place Bladee (Benjamin Reichwald) and Varg 2M (Jonas Rönnberg)—members of the Swedish artist collective Drain Gang—have been opening a collaborative present of work in an exhibition titled “Fucked for Life.” Soi-disant indie publicist Kaitlin Phillips had organized the dinner at Lucien and gathered an eclectic group of fashions, artists (Aurel Schmidt), writers (Natasha Stagg and The Guardian’s Edward Helmore), podcasters (Eileen Kelly, of “Going Psychological”), and members and relations of Drain Gang (musician Ecco2k and Bladee’s youthful brother). Effectively into my second Bare and Well-known, I used to be shocked to be taught that the gregarious, bighearted, and prolifically tattooed man I’d been talking to for an hour was not, in actual fact, Bladee, however his portray and music collaborator, Varg; the true Bladee was seated to my left—an unassuming younger man with a candy, shy smile and mild voice. 

“I’ve to confess I do know little or no about your music,” I instructed him. 

“Thank god,” he stated, laughing. We agreed to share the vegetarian and rooster dish.

Jonas and Benjamin requested the New Yorkers on the desk what the artwork world is like. 

“Boring,” provided Eileen.

“Anxious and self-conscious,” I answered. “Which I feel is what could make it boring.”

“Each time I speak to a journalist, they at all times ask, ‘Is your artwork political?’” stated Jonas, who’s Indigenous Swedish. “I reply, ‘Respiratory is political. Each breath I take is political.’” And you recognize what, I completely agree with him.


The author and artist Bladee.

The writer and artist Bladee.

Because the night time wore on, we went to Pebble Bar for the afterparty for Caroline Polachek and Ethel Cain’s “Spiraling Tour” Radio Metropolis Music Corridor live performance at Rockefeller Middle. When the door lady with the iPad requested my pal Damon Sfetsios who he was, he replied, “I’m Dean Kissick.” (Andy Warhol: “The one time I ever need to be one thing is exterior a celebration so I can get in.”) Inside, Korakrit Arunanondchai and Diane Severin Nguyen have been consuming; John Kelsey was in his baseball cap; the true Dean Kissick, Olivia Kan-Sperling, and Chloe Smart have been dancing; and I used to be falling aside.


Olivia Kan-Sperling and Dean Kissick at Pebbles.

Olivia Kan-Sperling and Dean Kissick at Pebbles.

Sunday morning, I remembered I’d agreed to sit down for pictures for Kye Christensen-Knowles in preparation for an upcoming portrait present at Lomex. As I arrived, hungover, to his Gowanus studio, he took one have a look at me and well handed me a Smartwater. And there, as he snapped away, I assumed concerning the refraction between topic to object in our present hypervisual financial system, and the ubiquity of self-representation and the prosthetic physique in these vexed new Roaring Twenties. The decadence continued into Tuesday night at collector Valeria Napoleone’s home on Park Avenue, the place Jordan Barse had organized a dinner (vegetarian and home-cooked, by Valeria herself) and drinks for Nancy Dwyer in an condo amply embellished with work by Cosima von Bonin, Jutta Koether, Liz Craft, Wallace & Donohue, Nicole Eisenman, and Lily van der Stokker desk and chairs. I used to be delighted to see previous associates and writer-curators Saim Demircan and Laura McLean-Ferris, on the town from Italy for a chat on the Swiss Institute. They joked, “Haven’t they named your column but—or is it ‘Intercourse and the Metropolis’?”


Wendy’s Wok World dinner in collaboration with Swiss Institute, with the author, Hillary Lui, Diane Severin Nguyen, Korakrit Arunanondchai, designer Isobel Herbold, artist Cherisse Gray, film editor Sylvia Herbold, and publicist Cynthia Leung.

Wendy’s Wok World dinner in collaboration with Swiss Institute, with the writer, Hillary Lui, Diane Severin Nguyen, Korakrit Arunanondchai, designer Isobel Herbold, artist Cherisse Grey, movie editor Sylvia Herbold, and publicist Cynthia Leung.

Lacan described psychoanalysis because the “hystericization of discourse,” and my trainer Jamieson Webster jogs my memory that that is the tautological basis of psychoanalysis—a physique involves characterize itself someplace, and gives up her dwelling archive of libidinal configurations for interpretation. On the finish of the night time, I dipped right into a comfort retailer to purchase a charger for my vape (Elf Bar, sundown taste), which I’d been puffing on contained in the honest, the eating places, the residences, the bars, and even, in truth, on the church—not from anxiousness a lot as the necessity to take a breather from the fixed scene modifications of the week, and forward of the hours wherein I’d try to dredge their remnants for themes, frictions, and arcs in opposition to a world exterior the place which means more and more appears to break down. In actual fact the boundary between what’s inside and outdoors, on-line and off, feels extra distorted and swirlier than ever, and as I inhaled, then exhaled, I puzzled, the place would this delirious outburst of libido—the profound amplification of a voluptuous, mutational drive—that has erupted and torn via the artwork world’s Trump- and Covid-era pieties take us subsequent?

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