The November/December issue of frieze is out now. A City Report from Cape Town looks at both new institutions and grassroots arts spaces, while David Geers considers the new wave of figurative painting in recent New York shows. Plus, monographs on Ed Atkins, Johan Grimonprez and Studio Formafantasma; and Annette Kelm discusses the influences that have shaped her work.
City Report: Cape Town
“Cape Town’s institutions only tell a partial story of a city in recovery.” Sean O’Toole and Amie Soudien assess the benefits of new museums—including A4 Arts Foundation, the Maitland Institute, the Norval Foundation and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa—and burgeoning grassroots arts spaces to a local arts scene that is still in the throes of segregation and racism.
Acts of Recognition
“Today’s painting attempts to reconcile dreams, lived histories and the urgent task of modelling new futures.” David Geers reflects on the ascendance of figurative painting in recent New York exhibitions—including works by Lisa Brice, Jordan Casteel, Peter Doig, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Mark Thomas Gibson and Emily Mae Smith—and the critical questions it poses about which bodies we depict, for whom and to what end.
Also featuring:
Francesca Tarocco reports on recent changes in urban culture and queer aesthetics across the Sinosphere; Evan Calder Williams investigates the films of Johan Grimonprez, which probe the mechanisms of the arms trade; Turner Prize-winning artist Helen Marten responds to Ed Atkins’s latest work, Old Food, at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin; Alice Rawsthorn unpacks the ecological innovations of Studio Formafantasma’s new project, Ore Streams, at the inaugural NGV Triennial in Melbourne; and Nick Thurston compares the interactive experiences spurred by collectives Blast Theory, Forced Entertainment and Slavs and Tatars.
Columns and reviews
Associate editor Pablo Larios writes a fan letter in praise of the late Guy Davenport; Olivia Laing discussed the enduring relevance of Philip Guston’s “Klan” paintings amidst recent racial tensions in the US; Krzysztof Kościuczuk observes how “necropolo,” a new genre of macabre, deadpan music in Poland, reflects current political anxieties; Ben Eastham witnesses a revival of state-of-the-nation novels in his review of Virginie Despentes’s book trilogy, “Vernon Subutex”; Andrew Mellor surveys the London Sinfonietta, past and present, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary; and Elvia Wilk asks whether live-action role play can help us overcome social obstacles in the art world.
Plus: 33 exhibition reviews from around the world, including reports on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s retrospective at the Barbican, London, the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art and Aleksandra Mir at Modern Art Oxford and Tate Liverpool.
Answering our questionnaire is the legendary artist and choreographer William Forsythe, whose solo show at Gagosian Le Bourget, Paris, is on view until December 22.
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