Looking Forward: Bettina Steinbrügge
Curators from influential institutions predict their Frieze London highlights
Curators from influential institutions predict their Frieze London highlights
I am intrigued by whole the Live section, and above all by Mahmoud Khaled (Gypsum Gallery, Cairo, Live). It’s a fantastic move: to adapt Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ seminal “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) (1991) – but with the performer playing not music but the artist’s correspondence with such thinkers as Bifo Berardi and Angela Harutyunyan about art’s place in a violent world. At a time of so much change and so many challenges, this seems like an urgent discussion and one I want to be involved in.
Then in Focus there is the new installation by Jon Rafman (Seventeen, London, G24), whose narratives I always find very immersive and relevant to the contemporary moment – as are those of Timur Si-Qin (Société, Berlin, G20), who manages to select found images that insightfully describe our society. The Hamburg-based collective Jochen Schmith (VI, VII, Oslo, G18) always finds an entertaining and surprising way to comment on the mores and status of the art world, with witty minimalism and no lapses into moralism. Finally in this section, I am really excited by the prospect of new sculptures by Stewart Uoo (47 Canal, New York, G19): reliably weird but electrifying.
