April at No.9 Cork Street
This month's pop-up shows from international galleries include an exhibition of Iranian artists titled 'Realism', works by Belgian artist Alice Frey and a group exhibition organised by Faridah Folawiyo centering works by Black female artists
This month's pop-up shows from international galleries include an exhibition of Iranian artists titled 'Realism', works by Belgian artist Alice Frey and a group exhibition organised by Faridah Folawiyo centering works by Black female artists
The April programme at Frieze's Mayfair gallery space opens with exhibitions by Dastan Gallery (Tehran), Vendelmans and FF Projects (Faridah Folawiyo) running from April 13th until April 29th 2023.
Dastan presents 'Realism', an exhibition at Frieze’s No.9, Cork Street featuring the work of 24 Iranian artists. The exhibition examines the tension between ‘perceived reality’ and ‘real life experience’ in the work of artists who have either addressed the notion of realism in their practice or have employed it as an aesthetic strategy to express their lives —particularly as Iranians hold different vantage points. They substantiate their experiences, observations, and emotions through painterly marks and sculptural forms. What they present is certainly real: whether they are depictions in realistic and realism-inspired aesthetics or emotional gestures and interpretations, they are all impressions of what is real.
Dastan’s second display at Frieze No.9 Cork Street, 'Realism' includes works by Kiarash Alimi, Reza Aramesh, Fereydoun Ave, Maryam Ayeen & Abbas Shahsavar, Andisheh Avini, Gohar Dashti, Homa Delvaray, Mitra Farahani, Sahand Hesamiyan, Rana Javadi, Y.Z. Kami, Ghasem Hajizadeh, Alborz Kazemi, Shohreh Mehran, Mehran Mohajer, Mehrdad Mohebali, Farhad Moshiri, Pooya Razi, Behjat Sadr, Shayan Sajadian, Sina Shiri, Soheila Sokhanvari, Newsha Tavakolian. The presentation is accompanied by works of the Ghasemi Brothers, Mohammad Hossein Gholamzadeh, Farrokh Mahdavi, Farah Ossouli, Peybak, Ali Akbar Sadeghi, and Mamali Shafahi in the Viewing Room.
Manifold (Deluxe) is a group exhibition organised by FF Projects (Faridah Folawiyo), centering the work of Black female artists from all over the world. Building on the version that took place in Soho in November, Manifold (Deluxe) invites many of those artists back, with some new additions as well.
Thematically, the exhibition continues to question the limitations of approaching artists and their work through a singular lens. The artists in the show operate through layers; they create work that denounces easy accessibility by leaning on their complexities and contradictions. Working across painting, photography, video and print-making, the works and artists on show force us to question preconceived ideas about the hierarchy of planes. What is primary and what is secondary? Can multiple things be true of one artwork? Do form and function have to match? Can a work be abstract and representational? What does radical co-existence look like?
FF Projects: Manifold (Deluxe)
The exhibition will feature works by Kesewa Aboah, Turiya Adkins, Oluwatobiloba Ajayi, Ayoade Bamgboye, Shannon Bono, Blckgeezer, Hilda Kortei, Daëna Ladéesse, Olukemi Lijadu, Emmanuelle Loca-Gisquet, Lebogang Mogul Mabusela, Rachel Marsil, Joy Matashi, Fadekemi Ogunsanya, Isabel Okoro, Irene Antonia Diane Reece and Anika Roach.
For its inaugural exhibition, Vendelmans is proud to present a selection of works by Belgian artist Alice Frey (1895-1981). The exhibition is the first solo-presentation of the artist’s work outside of continental Europe, and also marks the first exhibition dedicated solely to Frey in the last fifty years.
The exhibited works, primarily executed in the 1930s, are illustrative of a particularly intriguing moment in the artist’s career, during which we encounter Frey searching for, and finding a visual language which was entirely her own. The self-portrait of 1936, showing the artist aside her palette which Frey exhibited at the Venice Biennale of that same year, is exemplary of this stride towards her artistic identity.
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Main image: Olukemi Lijadu, Study II (Birthday Hair), 2022
