Frieze 91 members are invited to an intimate studio visit with artist collective CFGNY.
During Frieze London 2024, a solo presentation of CFGNY’s work by Hot Wheels Gallery was awarded the Focus Stand Prize. CFGNY presented a new body of work utilizing cardboard – a material synonymous with trade and the disposable – and porcelain, an Asian luxury good that was furiously counterfeited in Europe. The sculptures combine casts of dollar-store knick-knacks with details drawn from East Coast American vernacular architecture and from historical British landscape paintings. The jury praised Hot Wheels’s booth for engaging with ‘the challenges of the commercial art fair context through an artist-designed display system incorporating different bodies of work. Accompanied by generous interpretation materials, the booth is a strong point of entry into CFGNY’s sculptural practice and their defining, innovative research on the term “vaguely Asian.”’
Cardboard, charcoal drawing
41 x 84 x 176 cm
Founded in 2016 as an ongoing dialogue on the intersection of art, fashion, and identity, artist collective CFGNY continually returns to the term "vaguely Asian": an understanding of racial identity as a specific cultural experience combined with the experience of being perceived as other. In addition to using fashion as a readymade, CFGNY’s practice spans mediums such as video, performance, architectural installation, and sculpture, researching the ways in which material assemblage and reproduction play a part in the formation and racialization of such “vaguely Asian” identities. CFGNY does not wish to represent what it means to be “Asian” in the singular; instead, it encourages the visualization of the countless ways one is able to be in the plural. CFGNY is composed of Daniel Chew, Ten Izu, Kirsten Kilponen, and Tin Nguyen.
Hot Wheels Athens London, founded by Hugo Wheeler and Julia Gardener, is a contemporary art gallery shaped through dialogue with artists and curators who were active in Athens post-2017 (documenta 14). It operates between Athens and, as of November 2023, London.