Alex Edelman’s Top 5 Picks from Frieze New York Viewing Room 2024
The acclaimed comedian wants to be “Bahrain-y-prince wealthy” enough to put an Olafur Eliasson on his wall and finds Issy Wood equally fun and menacing
The acclaimed comedian wants to be “Bahrain-y-prince wealthy” enough to put an Olafur Eliasson on his wall and finds Issy Wood equally fun and menacing
Olafur Eliasson, The dewdrop agora, 2024
Glass spheres, stainless steel, 24 carat gold leaf, black paint, 68 × 68 × 33 cm. Presented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, $100k–$250k.
You never forget your first Olafur Eliasson exhibit, even if you’re going to misspell the last name when you text your friends about it. Light, color, sound, perspective. I saw this piece—expensive! so expensive!—at Frieze in Los Angeles and found the familiar classic Eliasson viewer/work experience at play. The closer you get to these orbs, the more the color deepens, and right up close, you get an inverted view of yourself. As you back away, it’s just nice glass balls. Which would be enough on their own, honestly. If I was Bahrain-y-prince wealthy and had room to put it somewhere, you can bet this gorgeous thing would find a place on my wall.
Issy Wood, Speeding! Hospitality!, 2023
Oil on velvet, 121 × 259 × 6 cm. Presented by Carlos/Ishikawa. $100k–$250k
Look. I love art with a sense of humor. Which is why I love Issy Wood. There’s playfulness in this tension between the future and the past. Where Turner might put a steamship pushing a wooden vessel out to sea, Issy—who is brilliant musician, as well—does something like this. There’s comedy here. And menace. Fun.
Xiao Jiang, Along the Ridge, 2023
Oil on burlap, 81 × 200 cm. Presented by Karma. $50k–$100k.
I just found out about Xiao Jiang, but I like his stuff. It reminds me of Hopper. And that one Caspar David Friedrich that’s really amazing. It’s at once planar and abstract but extremely specific and well-rendered, and there’s so much momentum in his use of color here. Obviously there’s no right way to “read” a painting, but something about the eye draws you from left to right, light to dark here. Love.
Ricardo Brey, A Clearing in the Woods, 2023
Mixed media, 1.2 × 1.6 m. Presented by Alexander Gray Associates. $20k–$50k
The description of this says “Brey frequently incorporates rhizomatic forms … into his work. Indicative of the artist’s indebtedness to Deleuzian theory, the continually growing stems of the rhizome provide an alternative conceptual model by which we can experience and parse multiplicities rather than simplifying lived experience to reductive binaries.” I don’t know what most of those words mean, but I like the way he uses different splashes of the color blue.
R.H. Quaytman, Ones, Chapter 0.1, 2022–23
Oil, distemper on wood, 31 × 19 cm. Presented by Miguel Abreu Gallery. $22k
R. H. Quaytman! She’s Bostonian art royalty, and, gosh, the “Chapters” series—worth a Google, just saying!—is just a whole meal in and of itself. I like this one a ton. It’s hard to find specificity in abstract art sometimes. I love her work because there’s so much attention to detail and this one right here is no exception. Some abstract stuff feels very boring. I feel like I could look at this for hours.
About Alex Edelman
One of the most critically hailed comedians of his generation, Alex Edelman is best known for solo shows that blur the line between his stand-up comedy roots and narrative-driven storytelling. His last offering, Just for Us, played more than 500 performances all over the world, including on Broadway, before premiering as an HBO original comedy special in April of 2024. Edelman will next appear in Jerry Seinfeld’s directorial debut for Netflix, Unfrosted. He is currently developing a movie with A24 that he will write, direct and star in with Marc Platt and Stephen Levenson producing. His debut non-fiction collection, I Don’t Belong Here, recently sold to Avid Reader at auction. Alex was a staff writer on The Great Indoors for CBS, a story editor on Teenage Bounty Hunters for Netflix, and the head writer for Saturday Night Seder, which raised over $3.5 million for the CDC Covid-19 Emergency Relief Fund. He has written for outlets such as The Atlantic and The Believer, has written and produced documentaries for the US State Department and ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, and spent more than a decade working as a speechwriter for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox.
About Frieze Viewing Room
Open to all from April 24–May 10, Frieze Viewing Room is the online catalog for the fair that gives global audiences access to gallery presentations coming to Frieze New York 2024. Visitors can search artworks by artist, price, date and medium, save favorite artworks and presentations, chat with galleries and much more.
Further Information
For all the latest news from Frieze, sign up to the newsletter at frieze.com, and follow @friezeofficial on Instagram, Twitter and Frieze Official on Facebook.
Frieze New York is supported by global lead partner Deutsche Bank, continuing over two decades of a shared commitment to artistic excellence.
Main image: Alex Edelman
