16/06/08
Frieze Projects 2008: Curatorial Programme Announced
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Frieze Projects is a programme of artists’ commissions realised annually at Frieze Art Fair. It is curated by Neville Wakefield and this year includes 11 new commissions as well as the Cartier Award and collaborations with this year’s partner institutions Kling & Bang (Iceland) and MUSAC (Spain).
Eleven artists have been commissioned to create site-specific work for Frieze Art Fair. This year the projects engage with the ecology of the fair and its surroundings and reflect on the tensions between nature and culture, pollution and purity, economic gain and strategic loss. Above all, Frieze Projects presents art that regards the particular circumstances of Frieze Art Fair as an opportunity to create work that could not exist elsewhere.
Cory Arcangel will intervene in the fair’s gallery selection process. Like Willy Wonka, Arcangel has hidden a golden ticket inside one of hundreds of chocolate bars which were sent to all the galleries who were unsuccessful in their application to this year’s fair. The finder of the golden ticket will be allocated a stand at the fair.
Pavel Büchler delights in drawing attention to the obvious and his project is an expression of the metaphorical climate of the fair. Reinforcing the experience of dislocation from reality, his piece will confound the senses of visitors in the entrance corridor by playing sounds that represent the opposite of actual external weather conditions.
Ceal Floyer will be working with one of the ubiquitous irritations of social life: the placing of a folded beer mat under a table leg to stabilize it. In fact the idea of steadying an uneven surface is turned on its head and instead a situation of co-dependence is created, with all the legs of the table being balanced on beer mats and relying on each other to create ‘stability’.
Sharon Hayes will present a performance that increases in intensity on each subsequent day of the fair. The performance will be an exposure of the constitution of the fair’s audience and will reflect notions of inclusivity, exclusivity and advantaged information.
Jeppe Hein draws together the artificial construction of the fair with the natural surroundings of the park in an installation of subtly animated trees outside the entrance to the fair. Creating an illusion that is visually unsettling, the piece is also an encouragement to pause amid the frenetic human activity inside the tent.
Tue Greenfort will excavate a chamber between gallery stands to present an installation that is both a space to relax and - literally – a distillation of the essence of visitors to the fair. While inside a darkened room filled with the sound of waves, dehumidification equipment will imperceptibly extract moisture from unsuspecting visitors.
Agnieszka Kurant will present a trio of trained parrots that have been taught to use an alternative language. Both a reflection on nature behaving unnaturally and a caricature of the zoo-like atmosphere of the art fair and the self-reflexive communication of the art world. Referring to two similar but unrealized projects by other artists, Kurant also questions the notions of copyright and the marketplace.
Norma Jeane, an artist who works outside the commercial gallery system, will present a performance that depends on audience participation. The piece will be both a commentary on how the once-social activity of smoking has been transformed through regulation and legislation into something deeply-antisocial, and a presentation of the heightened discomfort required to indulge private pleasure in public space.
Bert Rodriguez will create a performance based installation project consisting of a massage station located in a centralized, highly trafficked area of the fair. At certain times for the duration of the fair, the artist will be available to perform a ten minute foot massage for any weary visitors walking through.
Allen Ruppersberg will be following in the tradition of the travelling bard, by performing and selling poems at reduced prices during the time of the fair. Setting up an ad-hoc stall inside the Koenig bookstore, Ruppersberg will be bringing some of the anti-commercialism of the beat era to the slick marketplace of the art fair.
Andreas Slominski will furnish the fair with elements familiar from public spaces overseas but rare in the UK. Digital signage in various location inside the fair will play with received notions of time and climate and disrupt expectations of trust in so-called official information.
Partners
Kling og Bang, the artists collective from Iceland, will commemorate Sirkus, a Reykjavik bar, landmark, and hub of the alternative arts scene, which is due for demolition. Kling og Bang will save its facade and interior and re-erect it at the Frieze Art Fair, like a circus moving to another town. A zany nomadic act reflecting the drive of Icelandic art, producing a situation of one circus within another for artists to respond to.
MUSAC (the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León) from Spain will present three artists’ projects that intersect with the fair’s daily traffic on the subtlest of levels in order to represent the institution within the art fair.
Entitled Intangible Actions, curator Agustín Pérez Rubio has selected three Spanish artists who have had individual projects in the museum programme: the invisible performance Los Romeos by Dora García, the project Frieze Ringtone by Carles Congost and the action Momentos de Intensidad (Moments of Intensity)” by Marc Vives + David Bestué. A special edition of FAKE magazine will also be distributed.
Resonance104.4fm, London’s art radio station will be broadcasting Frieze Talks live from the fair along with interviews and specially commissioned radio art projects. Fair visitors will be able to watch the Resonance team at work and contribute to the debate. Listeners can tune in on 104.4FM in the London area.
