Paul Carey-Kent gives us his selection of what to do in London during Frieze week. There’s quite the overload of art. So if you have time for Frieze and Frieze Masters, here are a dozen other things to do.
Seni Awa Camara: Maternité Submergente, 1986 at Magnin-A, Paris
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair (Thurs-Sun at Somerset House). I like Sunday and PAD as well, but this is the most distinctive of the quality alternatives to Frieze.
Clyfford Still at the Royal Academy: the Abstract Expressionism show has lots of great art, of course, but I had some reservations about every room – except Room 11, containing ten magisterial Stills.
Donna Huanca at the Zabludowicz Collection. Where is action painting now? Here’s where… as enacted in slow motion by ten performers during Frieze week (and two thereafter)
Jeff Koons at Almine Rech (new additional space at Grosvenor Hill) and Newport Street Gallery. Love him or loathe him, it’s hard to ignore this double.
David Salle: Lampwick’s Dilemma, 1989
Cindy Sherman & David Salle at Skarstedt, 8 Bennet St: this list is proving too American (and I’m not even mentioning the Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and Ed Rusha solo shows) but this imaginative combination in Skarstedt’s new space was the best thing to open last week.
Levi Van Veluw at Rosenfeld Porcini (opens Thurs eve): a whole space installation from probably the most interesting young Dutch artist in his first London solo.
Neo Rauch at David Zwirner (opens Tues eve): can this really be Rauch’s first solo show in London? Plus, in the project space, a collaboration between Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibon.
Latifa Echakhch at kamel mennour – rising French Morrocan star first up at the most intriguing new gallery arrival: the Paris gallery’s new space is at 51 Brook Street (opens Tues eve).
William Kentridge at the Whitechapel Gallery: my list is rather central, but both the East (Edward Burtynsky and Thilo Heinzmann for example) and South (Amalia Ulman and Roman Ondack come to mind) also have plenty of interest. The obvious pick is the six large-scale installations of Kentridge’s ‘Thick Time’.
House of the Nobleman (10 Park Crescent by appointment from Monday): this art occupation of luxury living spaces looks the best of the off-site specials
Suzanne Treister: HFT The Gardener/Outsider artworks/Acacia maidenii (Maiden’s Acacia) (2014-15)
23 Dering Street: one building with three excellent shows: Suzanne Treister‘s remarkable fantasy of drugs meets market trading meets outsider art (Annely Juda), a beautifully cadenced Luca Nogueria show (Juda jointly with Anthony Reynolds) and a fresh group show of young Americans at Ronchini.
Shezad Dawood at Timothy Taylor: it’s worth booking to spend time in Dawood’s stunning virtual tableaux of Kalimpong – you even get the chance to reach nirvana
Andrew Curtis: Garage Door Paintings @ PayneShurvell, 71 Blandford St – Baker St
To 26 Oct (by appointment): info@payneshurvell.comAndrew Curtis has tended to configure modernism as an alien presence in suburbia: now the two merge in one-to-one scaled silver paintings of six garage doors propped against the walls rather like their models, all of which were metal garage doors which Curtis found abandoned in the urban landscape. Frank Stella comes to mind in the pleasingly various parallel lined compositions, actually achieved with tremulous patience by painting several layers of aluminium around the still-exposed cotton duck.Thilo Heinzmann: To Be And To Be @ Carl Freedman Gallery, 29 Charlotte Rd – ShoreditchTo 23 Oct: www.carlfreedman.comUntitled, 2016 (detail)
Violence and beauty often combine to effect in abstract painting. There’s a double dose now: not just Gunther Uecker’s fine show at Dominique Levy, but also Thilo Heinzman’s new work. The Berlin artist takes an axe to the back of a sheet of white aluminium to make variably oriented incisions in the wake of Fontana, then invokes Miro and Sam Francis in the delicacy with which he pools on colours which respond to the placement of the cuts without ever feeling determined by them. The effect is celestial and floral, and Heinzmann’s own mix of pure pigments with liquid resin has the added attraction that they still look deceptively wet.Untitled, 2016 (full: 150 x 130 cm)
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Marta Marcè: Passages @ Riflemaker, 79 Beak St – SohoTo mid Oct: www.riflemaker.org/s-Marta%20Marce
Now & Ever 76, 2016
Berlin-based Spaniard Marta Marcè’s native language is Catalan, but fortunately, having lived in London for several years, she speaks English to me. Her paintings share that fluency across languages: she used to derive abstraction directly from game, now geometric structures hint at meaning – are they portals, or magical symbols? – but the play goes on beneath: casual taping as generator of bleeding line; explorative layering and mixing of colours; the subversion of her shapes’ apparent striving for purity. In that context, showing against Riflemaker’s rough boarding makes sense, though I’d like to see how Marcè would look at, say, David Zwirner.
_________________Kelvin Okafor: Interludes @ Albemarle Gallery, 49 Albemarle St – CentralTo 1 Oct: www.albemarlegallery.com
