This post was originally published on artnews.com
I’m not usually one for sculptures. I’ve always found paintings, prints, and drawings to be far more approachable. Much more digestible, even if I can’t make sense of the work. But, while walking through Frieze Sculpture’s presentation in London’s Regent’s Park, my preexisting aversion to sculpture seemed to dissipate as I strolled past works by Zanele Muholi, Leonora Carrington, Yoshimoto Nara and over a dozen other artists.
Birds were chirping. A squirrel, mouth full of nuts, ran past as I approached the first work on the walk between Frieze London and Frieze Masters, which are situated on opposite sides of the park. It was cartoonishly charming. Then I realized what, perhaps, my beef with sculpture might be: the frame. Pictures, like books and magazines, are almost always in some sort of square or rectangular frame and that in itself makes them familiar, even if whatever has been spread or brushed or scraped in between those four walls attracts or repulses me.
Sculptures, on the other hand, are wild. For the most part, my interaction with sculpture has been in white-walled galleries with poured cement floors, or in museums surrounded by paintings. But sculptures are untamed beasts that—I realized as I walked through the park—need room to be appreciated.
Carrington’s 2011 work, The Dancer (El Bailarín) probably sparked that idea for me. Part totem, part goddess, she has a wicked tongue whipping out of the head of a bird of prey and four outstretched hands. It’s sexy in a truly bizarre way, standing on one leg in the royal grass. It wasn’t just me that thought so. People were gathered around her, snapping photos. One woman, a tall buxom blonde sporting a Russian accent, posed for pictures in front of the Dancer while her friend—also six feet tall, also blonde—snapped away with a cell phone. With each frame, the sitter showed a little more leg, a little more chest. It was as if The Dancer was egging her on. I’m putting on a show, why aren’t you. That Instagram post will do well, I’m sure.
The raw power of Carrington’s bronze was matched by Muholi’s 2023 work Bambatha I, which showed the artist herself, left life all but squeezed out of her by some sort of monstrous shingling serpent or unholy tubing. Only her hands and head have been able to escape the knotty prison. The work is a reference to Muholi’s body with both fibroids and gender dysphoria, and the fact that she is standing there, alone in a giant green space, and will be there still tonight, made the work all the more unsettling.
Photo by Linda Nylind for Frieze. 17/09/2024.
There is a bent towards the brassy figurative, the metallic representation of the organic, in a lot of the sculptures on view. İnci Eviner’s Materials of Mind Theatre most successfully, and loudly, avoids that trope. Eviner’s work, from 2024, was made of a long, tall bright white table or pedestal that almost erupts out of the park’s grass. It is accented by sharp black triangles and sharp slopes. On top of the pedestal are 25 stoneware clay ceramic sculptures that look like they could be masks, costumes, or even some sort of alien actors on a stage. Each has its own theatrically inspired name: Black Cyrano de Bergerac or A Tyrant, The Biggest Manipulator of All Ages, to name two.
Frieze Sculpture was organized by Fatoş Üstek who first curated the section last year.
“This year’s selection pushes our ambition one step further, featuring daring and experimental artistic approaches. It also carves a place for playful encounters, socially and environmentally conscious themes, as well as conceptual and spiritual practices that expand the notion of sculpture in the public realm,” Üstek said in a press release. It’s the last part that I think it most important. There’s a good argument for more public art, more sculpture in green spaces that anyone can enjoy or avoid as they please.
Frieze Sculpture runs through October 27, but it wouldn’t hurt to have the works around longer.