On the 20th anniversary of the gallery’s participation in the fair, Lehmann Maupin returns to Regent’s Park with presentations at both Frieze London and Frieze Masters. At Frieze London, Lehmann Maupin will exhibit a solo presentation of new paintings by British artist Billy Childish. The artist will be present at the booth during key days of the fair, where he will paint on site.
At Frieze Masters, Lehmann Maupin will present a selection of sculptures and paintings by Korean artist Kim Yun Shin in the Studio section, curated by Sheena Wagstaff. This presentation marks the gallery’s inaugural participation in the fair’s sector dedicated to 20th century works. Concurrent to the fair, Kim’s work is on view in Foreigners Everywhere, the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. In early 2025, Kim will have her debut solo exhibition in the United Kingdom at Lehmann Maupin London.
Billy Childish at Frieze London
Stand C13
A new series of landscape paintings by Billy Childish will debut at the booth. Childish’s artistic practice is all encompassing, spanning poetry and prose, punk rock music, and photography, printmaking, and painting. Known for his vivid, emotionally charged paintings on warm linen canvas, the artist works quickly and intuitively to realize each work, sketching the underlying composition in charcoal within a hand-drawn frame and using a rich palette of oil paint to render light, shadow, volume, and form. The subjects in Childish’s paintings are often taken from his immediate environment—the River Medway in South East England, self-portraits, the chalk cliffs of Margate, and images of his family make frequent appearances. The artist’s work also veers into the imagined world, with the artist finding inspiration everywhere, from film scenes, to historical photographs, to his own internal dreamscapes.
In this new series, Childish depicts scenes inspired by time spent in California with his family. The works on view depict a series of quietly beautiful landscapes as the seasons change; Childish’s primary subjects include rocky mountainscapes, the rising and setting sun, swimmers immersed in flowing water, snow covered river banks, and pine trees standing tall. At once tangible and surreal, his landscapes forge a connection between this world and the beyond, between the spiritual and the material. In works like sun, tahoe and at edward’s crossing (both 2024), the artist remembers that connection with the transcendent is often most accessible through the direct experience of natural beauty. Childish will be present at the booth on October 9 and 10 starting at 12 PM to paint on-site and discuss his practice with viewers.
Kim Yun Shin at Frieze Masters
Studio, curated by Sheena Wagstaff
Stand B9
A selection of historically significant sculptures (from the 1970s–2000s), three historical paintings (from the 1970s), and a selection of recent paintings (from 2012–present) by Korean artist Kim Yun Shin will be on view in the Studio section of Frieze Masters. Kim’s sculptural practice engages with the fundamental qualities of materials and nature, navigating themes of confrontation, introspection, and coexistence. Using solid wood as her primary medium, she visualizes the intersection between nature, time, and history, reconsidering the very essence of human existence. Her early sculptures from the 1970s are deeply rooted in traditional Korean hanok architecture, which uses a distinctive technique that joins wooden blocks without nails. Her paintings are marked by distinctive surface fragmentation; across her compositions, large sections gradually divide into smaller shapes. The resulting artworks evoke a primordial energy, at once expansive and concise, concentrated and diffused. The presentation will also include a selection of ephemera from Kim’s studio in Seoul, reconstructing her creative environment.
Selections from several series will be on view at the booth. In the artist’s acclaimed Song of My Soul paintings, Kim creates by process of addition and reduction, using a knife to apply and scrape off paint. These invented “scapes”—land, sea, sky—convey an embodiment of Kim’s emotional and spiritual connection to a place, rather than any formal geographic location, emphasized via the repeated title Song of My Soul. Similarly, Kim’s more recent sculptural series Tree Full of Songs, where she paints on cast bronze, functions as an expression of the artist’s spiritual energy. Meanwhile, sculptures from Kim’s historic and ongoing Add Two Add One Divide Two Divide One series are assemblages of terracotta-hued natural wood—algarrobo, indigenous to South America—stacked vertically and scarred with angular notches and planes. The resulting objects appear like sprouting plants or gestural figures, evoking both human and animal forms.
Additional Highlights
Additional highlights, presented in an internal viewing room at the gallery’s Frieze London booth, include three new paintings by McArthur Binion, on the heels of his solo exhibition at the Peter Marino Foundation in Southampton, New York; a new painting titled Kite Flyer in Red (2024) by Dominic Chambers, whose debut solo exhibition in the United Kingdom Meraki is on view at Lehmann Maupin London; a recent work by Liza Lou, whose new body of work Painting is currently on view at Lehmann Maupin New York; and two new paintings by Tammy Nguyen, whose solo exhibition Timaeus and the Nations opens at the Sarasota Art Museum in Sarasota, Florida on October 20th; as well as new and recent works by artists including Loriel Beltrán, Mandy El-Sayegh, Teresita Fernández, Arcmanoro Niles, Catherine Opie, Tony Oursler, Oren Pinhassi, and David Salle. Notably, the gallery will also present a neon work by Tracey Emin.