Five Emerging Artists to Watch at Frieze London 2024
Discover domestic cinema, doomed glaciers and helium penguins through the work of some of the world's most exciting new talents, including Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw, Tania Ximenam, Fuentesal Arenillas, Benedikte Bjerre and Eva Gold
Discover domestic cinema, doomed glaciers and helium penguins through the work of some of the world's most exciting new talents, including Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw, Tania Ximenam, Fuentesal Arenillas, Benedikte Bjerre and Eva Gold
The Focus section at Frieze London 2024 will showcase some of the most thought-provoking artwork being made today, from Tania Ximena’s film charting the life of a Mexican glacier to Fuentesal Arenillas's metamorphic sculpture of the in-between. Consumerism and biodiversity, oppression and empowerment, consent and voyeurism: these are just some of the issues that emerge from the wide constellation of questions being asked by artists from around the world.
Spanning 20 countries, the 37 emerging artists share a determination to push concepts and materials to new limits. Here are just five of the most exciting artists bringing new solo projects to Frieze London 2024.
Eva Gold presented by Rose Easton (London)
For Rose Easton’s Frieze fair debut, Eva Gold transforms the gallery booth into a living room, complete with a leather sofa, worn brown carpet and framed drawings of movie scenes. In this tightly directed space, the presence of a voyeur – who is implied as male – is palpable but invisible. Gold explores cinema’s mechanisms of power and misplaced trust, musing on these themes in a text that sits at the centre of the scene, atop a stack of paper. Combining narrative with installation, Gold draws the audience into an intimate experience in which they are made to question boundaries of space, privacy and consent.
Tania Ximena presented by Llano (Mexico City)
For nearly ten years, Tania Ximena has documented the Jamapa, Mexico’s last living glacier, which sits at the summit of the Pico de Orizaba volcano. Presented by Llano, Ximena’s three-channel video continues her revelation of how climate change has impacted the surrounding landscape and prompted the resilience of local communities. Río de Niebla, Río de Adobe, Río de Sangre (2019–23) is structured as a descent from snowlike to coast, drawing portraits of those living in connection with the river along the way. Ximena’s accompanying paintings on linen punctuate the looming ecological and socio-economic change as three key moments: the disappearance of the glacier, the river and the ecosystem.
Benedikte Bjerre presented by palace enterprise (Copenhagen)
A huddle of identical, foil-coated, helium-puffed baby penguins fills palace enterprise’s space for Benedikte Bjerre’s installation The Birds (2017). Bouncing aimlessly across the floor, the penguins satisfy and expose our desire for entertainment while offering a shrewd, witty take on mass consumerism and climate change. Bjerre’s work references Alfred Hitchcock’s eponymous 1963 film, contrasting the director’s vengeful enactment of his birds’ agency with his penguins’ blithe acceptance of their own limitations and fate.
Fuentesal Arenillas presented by El Apartamento (Madrid)
The Spanish artist duo Fuentesal Arenillas (Julia Fuentesal and Pablo M. Arenillas) have worked in collaboration for more than a decade. At the core of their practice is a sensitivity to the ductility of the materials they work with. Presented by El Apartamento, Fuentesal Arenillas’s latest works, such as their ‘Comisura’ (2024) and ‘Aparejo’ (2022) series, combine diverse materials, embracing a notion of halfway forms positioned on the cusp of meaning and its dissolution, and two- and three-dimensionality.
Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw presented by Wschód (Warsaw)
Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw’s multimedia practice is rooted in the textures and workings of urban life. Shaw reveals how specific characteristics repeat across buildings, public spaces and cityscapes. Seeking to ‘alienate his subjects from their utilitarian capacities’, Shaw looks at how commemoration and nostalgia feed into our experience of architecture and objects. Presented by Wschód, Shaw’s tableaux simultaneously spark intimacy and detachment: we feel a familiarity in the forms and spaces he presents, yet their architectural precision makes them distant.
About the Focus Section
Focus returns to Frieze London 2024, showcasing emerging talent from the UK capital and around the world. Frieze’s longstanding section dedicated to fostering a community of young galleries is this year advised by Joumana Asseily (Founder, Marfa’), Piotr Drewko (Founder, Wschód), and Cédric Fauq (Chief Curator, CAPC musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux).
Focus is presented in collaboration with Stone Island, whose bursaries further aid young galleries’ participation in the fair alongside Frieze’s existing support.
Further Information
Frieze London and Frieze Masters, 9 – 13 October 2024, The Regent’s Park.
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Main Image: Tania Ximena, Río de Niebla, Río de Adobe, Río de Sangre, 2019–23. Three-channel colour video installation. Courtesy: the artist and Llano
