Xue Tan’s Top Picks from Frieze Viewing Room
The Chief Curator of Haus der Kunst chooses Nam June Paik and Lotus L. Kang at Frieze London and Frieze Masters 2024
The Chief Curator of Haus der Kunst chooses Nam June Paik and Lotus L. Kang at Frieze London and Frieze Masters 2024
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 45th Parallel, 2022
Single-channel video, colour, sound, 149 × 83.2 × 4.6 cm, 00:15:00. Presented by Maureen Paley. Reserved
It feels like a revelation each time I dive into Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s work. His recent work 45th Parallel questions the contradictory realities that we live in. This work is especially poignant amid the current upheavals. The absurd nature of borders, in this case, is told at a dual-jurisdiction site that serves as a cultural venue, a civic library and opera house. There is a strong sense of invasiveness in how border violence takes place in sheltered buildings, as today’s many public spaces of art and culture are constantly contested and under threat.
Lotus L. Kang, Receiver Transmitter (Inside you there is another you, II), 2024
Tatami mat, cast aluminium enlarged kelp knot, pigmented silicone, polypropylene, nylon, cast bronze lotus tubers, polypropylene tarp, silk, Face by Kim Hyesoon, photographs from the series ‘Fleshing Out the Ghost’, 29.84 × 217.17 × 94.61 cm. Presented by Franz Kaka. $15k
Lotus L. Kang’s works are softly hued, evoking memories of distant and private places, including home kitchens and street markets. Packed with sensitivity, memory and textures from everyday life, her work speaks to us in a gentle and careful tone. Kang embeds a beautiful vernacular in her multimedia approach. Many of her forms are translations of Asian culture and its culinary traditions, often with a lot of wit. Materials and time seem unfixed in her work, and elements are so vivid it as if they are still in motion. I always want to see more of her work, it’s addictive.
Rosalind Nashashibi, Single Bed, 2023
Oil on canvas, 100 cm × 80 cm. Presented by Grimm. Price on Application
Rosalind Nashashibi’s work navigates the deeply personal and political: both her films and paintings capture the emotional gravities tethered to place, memory and the people around her. Moments and gestures are suspended in her work, offering a gentle gaze into the interdependent relationships between people that shape family, friendship and spaces. Single Bed is a place of solace, its cloudy colour palette creates a private space – it’s tidy and soft, a small sanctuary offers an escape and protection. There is something so enchanting about the way Nashashibi transverses the visual languages of films and paintings, allowing each medium to inform the other in her exploration of private and public spaces.
Isabella Ducrot, Almost divine I, 2022
Collage, pigments, pencil and wood on Japanese paper, framed, 293 × 208 cm. Presented by Galerie Gisela Capitain / Sadie Coles HQ / STANDARD (OSLO). €62k
This set of incredibly sensual and beautiful works from Isabella Ducrot is a real discovery and pleasure at this year’s Frieze Masters. These collages and works on paper, depicting figures, still life and textile patterns, are full of colour, youthful energy and imagination. A lifetime collector of rare textiles and an artist true to her life, Ducrot only started making art in her fifties, and now, at 93, her works are widely loved in Italy and are being recognized internationally. This collage, Almost Divine I, has hallmarks of Ducrot’s oeuvre. The two figures in embrace, with a dreamy backdrop of the sky, remind us of the ecstatic feelings in reunion, in love, in companionship, and the simple bliss of life – a great wisdom I wish to possess in my older age.
Jen Liu, We All Live in the Ocean Now, #06, 2022–23
Acrylic ink, handmade gold acrylic, acrylic gouache and gesso on paper, 141 × 94.5 × 4.7 cm. Presented by Blindspot Gallery. Under $10k
I am still haunted by Jen Liu’s stunning film installation The Land at the Bottom of the Sea at the last Taipei Biennale – a lushly filmed speculative fiction on the disappearance of women labourers and the afterlife world. This series of drawings continues the narrative of these missing women in an underwater world, their bodies merging with the environment and continuing as part of it. These surrealistic figures of women are consciously reconnected to our ecosystem, continuing to breathe and transmit, giving continuity to life’s greatest misery.
Nam June Paik, Life Is Drama, 1990
Wooden television cabinet, television aerials, metal, oil paint, lacquer, wood, DVD player, two DVDs, 26 min 36 sec loop, 188 × 119 × 65 cm. Presented by Johyun Gallery. Not for sale
All great fairs end with a fantastic Paik. This work was completed in the 1990s, during the later stage of the artist’s career, and it’s an outstanding one. The puppet show in front of the television is a duet of figures and a duet of technology – theatre meets television. This work still feels very relevant today as we are immersed and exist in between different realities – the digital, the analogue and the hybrid.
About Xue Tan
Xue Tan is Chief Curator and Head of Programme and Exhibitions at Haus der Kunst in Munich, a non-collecting public museum. Prior to that, she was the founding Senior Curator of Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong from 2015–24, where she oversaw the exhibition programme and established a unique live and media programme that focused on new commissions.
About Frieze Viewing Room
Open to all 2 – 18 October 2024, Frieze Viewing Room is the online catalogue for the fair, giving global audiences access to gallery presentations coming to Frieze London and Masters 2024. Visitors can search artworks by artist, price, date and medium, save favourite artworks and presentations, chat with galleries and much more.
Further Information
Frieze London and Frieze Masters, 9 – 13 October 2024, The Regent’s Park.
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Main image: Lotus L. Kang, Receiver Transmitter (Inside you there is another you, II), 2024. Tatami mat, cast aluminium enlarged kelp knot, pigmented silicone, polypropylene, nylon, cast bronze lotus tubers, polypropylene tarp, silk, A Drink of Red Mirror by Kim Hyesoon, photographs from the series ‘Fleshing Out the Ghost’, 29.84 × 217.17 × 94.61 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Franz Kaka. Photo: LFdocumentation
