Lehmann Maupin returns to Frieze Los Angeles with a presentation that spotlights the multidisciplinary work of six pioneering women artists: Heidi Bucher, Mandy El-Sayegh, Kim Yun Shin, Lee Bul, Liza Lou, and Billie Zangewa. Working across painting and sculpture, each of these artists is known for their highly process-driven and radical practices that often engage the complex politics of the human body and its environment. The gallery’s presentation also celebrates two major artistic achievements: Lee Bul was recently selected by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for the 2024 Facade Commission, and Kim Yun Shin will have work on view in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Additionally, the gallery will release a limited-edition print by Los Angeles-based artist Calida Rawles. Titled ‘Twas Freedom (2023), the print was produced in collaboration with Magnolia Editions and features unique, hand-painted elements. The print will be available for purchase on Lehmann Maupin’s webstore starting February 29. A portion of the sales will be directed to Pregnancy Justice, a legal advocacy organization that defends the civil and human rights of pregnant people. In June 2024, Rawles will have her first institutional solo exhibition at the Perez Art Museum, Miami.
Featuring both new and historic work, Lehmann Maupin’s presentation foregrounds two groundbreaking Korean artists. Debuting at the fair are two new Perdu works by Lee Bul, who was recently commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York to produce new works for the museum’s facade. In this acclaimed body of work, the artist combines mother-of-pearl, lacquer, and wood with synthetic acrylic paint to create abstract, embodied forms that emerge from fields of color, inhabiting a liminal space between biology and technology, organic and artificial. Similarly, Korean artist Kim Yun Shin—who joined the gallery’s roster last month—works primarily with solid wood, a material meant to embody the primordial world. Her sculptures are rooted in traditional Korean hanok architecture’s structural connections, where wooden blocks are joined and/or stacked without the use of nails, as though unfolding organically from a natural state. In April, Kim will participate in Foreigners Everywhere, the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa; and in March, she will have her US debut at Lehmann Maupin New York.
Paired in harmonious juxtaposition are works by the late-Swiss artist Heidi Bucher, who lived and worked in Los Angeles during the early 70s, and London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh. While their processes vary, both artists explore embodied experience through material. Bucher first began to produce wearable sculptures during her time in California, initiating a years-long investigation of the body as a physical structure. She also began to explore the use of mother-of-pearl in her work, using the iridescent pigment to paint the surfaces of her soft sculptures. Bucher’s innovative skinnings, several of which are on view at the fair, probe the boundaries between the self and its surroundings. Each skinning is a latex casting of architectural elements; the haptic quality of their material evokes the human body. In contrast, El-Sayegh’s canvases are constructed through collage and include materials like newspapers, forged currency, and images derived from anatomical reference books. These motifs, which appear frequently in El-Sayegh’s work, act as a symbolic re-introduction of the body into the abstract. Last year, El-Sayegh published her first monograph, titled “The Makeshift Body,” in partnership with Black Dog Publishers.
Also on view at the booth are new works by Liza Lou and Billie Zangewa who each work with textiles to explore ideas of labor and femininity. Lou will have an exhibition of new work at Lehmann Maupin New York in September 2024, and Zangewa’s work is currently included in the exhibition Unravel at the Barbican Centre, London, on view through May 26, 2024.
Spanning both generations and geographies, these six artists are widely recognized for their distinctive approaches to art-making. Together, the works on view cement both the endless potentiality of material and the importance of process.