‘Pietro Roccaslava’s work is essentially about painting. If he could, he would only paint; but a bubbling excess of content and ambition seems to make this impossible.’

In the March issue of frieze, Jonathan Griffin unpacks the philosophical and optical enquiries of Pietro Roccasalva.

Also in issue 129: contributing editor Carol Yinghua Lu explores the performance, sculpture and painting of Zhang Huan; Jan Verwoert discovers the presence of both a life-affirming spirit and an inconsolable pain in the work of the late Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow; and Sharon Hayes talks about the politics of her performance with art historian Roger Cook.

Plus: Nina Power on The Otolith Group; and Eugenia Bell on the unlikely compatibility of Dutch and Arabic typography.

Regular columnist Robert Storr decries crowd management in the contemporary museum; Sean O’Toole surveys the re-writing of art history in South Africa; Ronald Jones tracks the rise of dark tourism; and Luca Cerizza examines the resurgence of interest in Italian Modernist pioneers Gianni Colombo and Francesco Lo Savio. In ‘Life in Film’, William E. Jones stakes a claim for Oscar Micheaux as the greatest American filmmaker.

This month, on the back page, Pae White answers the frieze ‘Questionnaire’.

With reviews from: Austria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA.

Exclusively on frieze.com

Video and audio from issue 129, including:

Music from Richard Skelton, Spacemen 3 and Pantha du Prince; videos of Sharon Hayes’ performances and her presentation at the Creative Time Summit in New York; exclusive works by Aurélien Froment; clips from films by The Otolith Group.