New York, April 20, 2016—Lehmann Maupin (Booth #C13) is pleased to announce its return to Frieze New York for the fifth consecutive year. The gallery, based in New York and Hong Kong, will include Ashley Bickerton, Tracey Emin, Liu Wei, Mickalene Thomas, and Erwin Wurm in a curated presentation of artists exploring unconventional portraiture and reflections of identity in their practice. Frieze New York opens with an invitational preview day on Wednesday, May 4, in Manhattan’s Randall’s Island Park.
The booth will feature historic and new mixed media works by Ashley Bickerton, the Bali-based artist who gained notoriety as one of the original members of the “Neo-Geo” group. With a long history of exploring portraiture, Bickerton has continually pushed the boundaries and possibilities of contemporary art making through bold experimentation of form and content as it relates to themes of consumerism, consumption, excess, and identity. Bickerton’s work is currently included in Le Consortium L’Almanach 16 in Dijon, France, and will be included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition, Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection, opening April 27 in New York. Bickerton’s work can also be found in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Tate, London.
Following the recent announcement that Erwin Wurm will represent Austria at the 57th Venice Biennale, a section of the Lehmann Maupin booth will be dedicated to a new body of work by the artist. Wurm has created bronze sculptures of modern furniture and household objects, which the artist deforms by sitting or walking upon in their clay forms prior to the final casting. These works will be arranged as a domestic interior, highlighting Wurm’s engagement with everyday objects as a catalyst for challenging and confounding perception of space, volume, form, and materiality. They will be presented alongside Wurm’s iconic One Minute Sculpture photographs and performances. These are activated on site by participants who execute the artist’s drawn or written instructions for a one-minute pose, using props or architecture, creating their own de facto portraits. The One Minute Sculptures will be performed in the booth throughout the day on Wednesday, May 4, and Thursday, May 5.
Concurrent with Frieze Week, Lehmann Maupin will open Stone Love, a solo exhibition of new work by Tracey Emin at the gallery’s Chelsea location, featuring new paintings, drawings, embroidery, sculpture, and neon, which continue Emin’s engagement with the tradition of figuration to explore her personal narrative, love, sexuality, and psychological pain. The artist will be present for an opening reception at the gallery on Thursday, May 5, from 6-8PM. At the gallery’s Lower East Side location, Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão’s solo exhibition, Kindred Spirits, will also be on view through June 19. There will be a champagne brunch at the 201 Chrystie Street gallery as part of the Frieze Week programing on Friday, May 6 from 10AM-12PM.