Frieze Library: Sam Gordon's Ten Top Picks
The artist and co-founder of Gordon Robichoux gallery shares his favourite publications from the launch edition of Frieze Library at Frieze Seoul
The artist and co-founder of Gordon Robichoux gallery shares his favourite publications from the launch edition of Frieze Library at Frieze Seoul
The Frieze Library initiative invites Frieze Seoul's exhibitors to submit an arts publication to be gifted to the Digital Library & Archive at the MMCA (The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea). This collection serves as an archive of the fair, reflecting the present day through artists, writers, and art professionals. The Frieze Library was conceived at Frieze New York in collaboration with Gordon Robichaux gallery (New York).
Sam Gordon, the co-founder of Gordon Robichoux and Frieze Library, shares his top picks from the launch edition of the project, including monographs by leading artists featuring at the fair to scholarly reproductions of medieval manuscripts.
Park Kyung Ryul,《왼쪽회화전 To Counterclockwise》, 2020
This catalogue, published by Doosan Gallery, is an opportunity to discover an emerging artist presented by Baik Art within the Focus Asia section. Park Kyung Ryul’s experimental practice is sequenced into book form, allowing for an overview of her painting in the expanded field.
Alison M. Gingeras, Pictures Girls Make: Portraitures, 2024
An urgent reexamination of portraiture thtough art history, from an exhibition curated by the tireless Alison M. Gingeras. This revisionist survey moves beyond binary thinking and includes gems such as Gertrude Abercrombie, Jerome Caja, Sylvia Sleigh, and many more.
Madhu Khanna, Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations and Experiments in Twentieth-Century Indian Art, 2022
Hudson of Feature Inc (1984–2014) first introduced Tantra to me (and many others) through the lens of contemporary art. The impact of Tantra on modern and contemporary artists has been major. As a search for meaning, as meditation devices, Tantra inherently functions as only the best art might hope to.
Katherine Bernhardt, Why is a mushroom growing in my shower?, 2022
The visual omnivore Bernhardt continues to expand her painterly universe. This catalogue from her recent exhibition in London includes new paintings on canvas and paper with delicious detail images you can get lost in.
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, I. M. Personally, 2023
This comprehensive monograph follows the nomadic life of Evelyn Taocheng Wang, whose studies have taken her from her native China through Germany to her current base in the Netherlands. The personal and political aspects of her life are intertwined through her multidisciplinary practice.
Laura Light and Sandra Hindman, Manuscript Bibles through the Ages: c. 1150–1550, 2024
Frieze Masters provides a unique opportunity to look at the past in relationship to contemporary art. This publication featuring fifteen manuscripts from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries might guide us to find meaning in the margins. As usual, the scholarship is impressive, the research extensive, and the reproductions stunning.
CHAO Chunghsiang, CHU Ko, LEE Chungchung, Richard LIN, TSONG Pu, Transcendence and Symbol: The Exhibition of Neoplastic Art in Taiwan, 2016
As abstraction became a global language by the 1960s, five artists in this exhibition, Chao Chung-Hsiang, Chu Ko, Richard Lin, Lee Chung-Chung, and Tsong Pu led the charge of postwar art in Taiwan, engaging in new forms of cross-cultural experimentation, with reverberations across contemporary oil painting, traditional ink painting, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, and beyond.
Texts by Rudi Fuchs, Seung-taek Lee, Invisible Questions That Fill the Air: James Lee Byars and Seung-taek Lee, 2023
One of the highlights on view in Venice this summer, the pairing of two visionaries—James Lee Byars and Seung-taek Lee—puts forth the commonalities between cultures rather than presenting binary perspectives.
A Journey to the Infinite: Yoo Youngkuk, 2024
A pioneer of abstraction, Yoo Youngkuk (1916–2002) merged traditional Korean aesthetics with modern Western art developments. Recently the writer Andrew Russeth suggested that Yoo deserves a biopic; he came of age during the Japanese occupation of Korea, studied art in Tokyo, and participated in avant-garde circles there. His inclusion this summer in the Venice Biennale was a significant start.
Juliana Huxtable, Mucus in My Pineal Gland, 2019
From digital space to the African diaspora, this debut collection by American artist, writer, performer, and DJ Juliana Huxtable is essential reading. With nods to Octavia E. Butler and Samuel Delany, Huxtable’s work spans numerous formats, including poetry, performance scripts, and essays, demonstrating why she is considered a leading voice of her generation.
About Frieze Library at Frieze Seoul
Following the success of the Frieze Library at Frieze New York over the last six years, we are pleased to introduce The Frieze Library: Volume One, Seoul, in collaboration with the MMCA Seoul (The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea) at Frieze Seoul 2024.
Initially conceived by the New York gallery Gordon Robichaux, the Frieze Library seeks to function as ‘a curatorial collaboration between a fair, a magazine, a museum and a gallery’ (Sam Gordon, Gordon Robichaux). The initiative invites each Frieze Seoul exhibitor to submit one art publication which together will form a collection of works on display at the fair.
At the close of the fair, the collection will be donated to the Digital Library & Archive at the MMCA, forming a part of its permanent collection.
Galleries are invited to submit a title that they feel both echoes their fair presentation and speaks to the present moment. Together, the collection of volumes will function as an of archive of the fair, offering a reflection of the present day as seen through the eyes of artists, writers, and art world professionals.
