Installation view of Limoncello and Taro Nasu’s booth at Frieze Art Fair 2016. Image courtesy of Limoncello / Taro Nasu.
The standard of installation is high at Frieze. Yet some booths still manage to look fresher than others. Limoncello and Taro Nasu’s clustered arrangement of 2-D and 3-D work at booth B13 comes off well with its contemporary salon feel. Each piece is different enough from another to allow for such close proximity. The eye moves from intriguing sculptural objects to the paintings on the wall via some casually stacked semi sculptural paintings on the floor.
Liz Larner, xv (caesura), 2016, ceramic, epoxy, mirror, 57,2 x 93,3 x 29,8 cm.
© Liz Larner, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris
In the first report from Frieze I mentioned Liz Larners’ glazed wall mounted ceramics. I’ve managed to get an excellent image of the piece on display at Galerie Max Hetzler’s booth no. A11. This is pure painting, without a stretcher or a right angle in sight, and stronger than a large number of the canvases in the vicinity.
Elements of what would typically be considered craft, such as ceramic or blown glass, are used to great effect in many of the works on display in this year’s fair. In Frieze Masters there is one piece by Bill Walton at Fleisher / Ollman’s booth (no. G14) which incorporates blown glass in an understated way alongside some fragments of timber. This is a clever alignment of a material which takes so much skill to produce with the rather more commonplace timber, the likes of which one might expect to find in a Kurt Schwitters assemblage.
Bill Walton, Leaf & Wrench, n.d. (c. 1980–84), Paint on wood and metal, found wrench, glass 81/4×151/2x2in(21x 39.4 x 5.1 cm), BW 691. Courtesy of the Estate of Bill Walton and Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia. Photo credit: Claire Iltis
Back at the Frieze contemporary art tent, Galeria Plan B at booth H11 is showing a contemporary take on assemblage by artist Navid Nuur. Nuur’s work self consciously evades any attempt to describe it under the terms sculpture or painting. Instead, it teases us with references to the conventions of both.
Navid Nuur, Untitled, 2014 – 2016, hand cut glass, acid, mirror, climbing grips, various types of wood ash glaze, 160 x 87.5 x 7.5. Courtesy the artist and Plan B Cluj, Berlin
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