Frieze London: Frank Bowling, Sebastiaan Bremer, Andrea Geyer, Trenton Doyle-Hancock, Thomas J Price & Carolee Schneemann
Hales Gallery
Stand D2
Frieze London
Regent’s Park
London, NW1 4NR
VIP preview: 3 October 2018
Public days: 4 - 7 October 2018
Hales is delighted to announce its participation in Frieze London 2018. Reflecting the vision of the gallery’s programme, the presentation at this year’s fair will feature works by Frank Bowling, Sebastiaan Bremer, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Andrea Geyer, Thomas J Price and Carolee Schneemann, all of whom continuously explore the pertinent questions of politics and aesthetics through material, form and colour.
British painter Frank Bowling has been creating a new series of paintings ahead of his upcoming retrospective at Tate Britain in 2019. Featured at Hales’ booth at Frieze London is Witness (2018), a wonderful example of these recent works which reflects the artist’s ongoing commitment to abstraction and his ability to continuously challenge the medium. Now in his 80s, Bowling doesn’t cease to continue exploring the nature and possibilities of paint and still experiments with a diverse range of formal devices and processes, ranging from stitched canvas frames to mixed media collage and poured paint. In recent years Bowling has produced some of the most exciting and challenging compositions of his career, as he continues to orchestrate the emotive potential of colours to communicate a visual experience of uniquely sensuous immediacy.
Dutch-born artist Sebastiaan Bremer uses pre-existing images to explore profound ideas about time, memory and processing. Clematis Hybrid Mevr. Le Feher Coutre (2018) is a new work from the ongoing series Bloemen, in which the artist takes images of flowers from a Dutch book of the same name published in 1948, transforming them with a veil of his signature white dots. These images of flowers are a symbol of Dutch identity and national pride, the book having been produced in Holland in the turbulent post-war years as part of an effort to rebuild the nation’s spirit. Adding another layer to the series, Bremer sees these works as being full of both hope and melancholia, as they exemplify the universal appeal and timelessness of flowers while also bringing back personal memories of home.
Through painting, sculpture and video, Texas Artist of the Year 2017 Trenton Doyle Hancock has created a mythological world, one in which an ongoing epic battle rages between good and evil. Over a twenty-year period, Hancock has developed intricate stories around the birth, death and life of a set of reoccurring characters: most notably the Mounds (half-animal, half-plant like creatures) and their aggressors, the Vegans. Inspired by the world of toys and classical comic book imagery, the artist invites the viewer to contemplate his richly colourful, imagined universe. Preceding next year’s solo exhibitions at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, Hales is delighted to be unveiling Undom Endgle, Striped Goddess, Enhanced Soul, Slayer of Wolves (2018), a new work which is a continuation to Hancock’s narrative, depicting one of his noble characters victorious in the battle of morality. This will be the first time Hancock’s works have been show in London since his solo exhibition with Hales in 2015.
In Andrea Geyer’s work, material and form express the artist’s engaged exploration into the complex politics of time in specific cultural contexts. This presentation highlights her ongoing investigation into women-identified philanthropists, collectors, museum directors, artists, poets, political and social visionaries, and activists who have actively shaped today’s cultural landscape and contemporary museums. Included in the presentation, Constellations (Dorothy Peterson after VanVechten) (2017), is part of Geyer’s series of photographic collages which consist of reimagined portraits that depict influential women who significantly impacted the culture and politics of their time. Dorothy Peterson (1897-1978) co-founded the Harlem Experimental Theatre in 1929, in the basement of the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library. The use of Petersen’s portrait is exemplary of Geyer’s work which continuously seeks to create spaces of critical, collective reflection on the construction of histories and ideas that are otherwise marginalised or obscured.
Thomas J Price explores 21st century racial and social identity through a rich sculptural practice. This presentation debuts the bold new work Power Object (Section 1, No.1) (2018), in which Price draws from current cultural perceptions of black masculinity and objectification. Playing with process and presentation, bringing together the conventions of classically crafted sculpture and contemporary technologies, Price subtly subverts traditional social and aesthetic hierarchies. Coinciding with Frieze, Price’s work can be seen in the City of London’s annual art festival, Sculpture in the City 2018.
Carolee Schneemann, winner of the 2017 Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award, has, over six decades, reshaped discourse on gender, sexuality and the body. Incorporating her physical body and subjective experience, the artist is both image and image maker. Schneemann’s work, ranging from painting-constructions and assemblages to kinetic multimedia installations, transcends the boundaries of media and discipline. Beatles Box (1962) comes from a pivotal moment of the artist’s career, and is an early example of her approach to painting as being linked to bodily motion. This kaleidoscopic construction opposes definition and categorisation, bursting from the canvas into physical space like a manifestation of the artist’s performances.
ABOUT HALES GALLERY
Founded by Paul Hedge and Paul Maslin in 1992, for over two decades Hales Gallery has been a focal point for artists, collectors and institutional figures alike and has formed an important environment for the development and distribution of artworks and ideas. At the core of the gallery’s principles is the nurturing of emerging talents alongside that of some of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most significant creative figures. Originally founded and based in London, Hales opened a Project Room on New York’s Lower East Side district in 2017. In an exciting development, Hales will be opening a main gallery space in Chelsea, New York, later this month, which will act as a platform through which to further reinforce the connection between the London gallery’s roster of artists and the international art community.
Hales Gallery regularly places its artists’ works in the collections of some of the world’s most significant private and public collections and works closely with respected curators and advisors in doing this. Some examples of the museum collections which have acquired works by Hales Gallery artists include Tate (London), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), MoMA (NYC), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC) and the Brooklyn Museum (NYC).
ABOUT FRIEZE LONDON
One of the world’s most influential contemporary art fairs, Frieze London is one of the few to focus only on contemporary art and living artists. Featuring more than 160 of the world’s leading galleries, the fair represents some of the most exciting artists working today, from the emerging to the iconic; and a team of world-leading independent curators advise on feature sections, making possible performance-based work and ambitious presentations by emerging galleries. Frieze takes place at the heart of its host city, forming part of London’s vibrant cultural fabric and international art scene.
