From Turner short-listed artist Spartacus Chetwynd, known for her puppet-plays and found-object tableaux, to deaf-mute artist Judith Scott, numerous artists at Frieze New York employed a variety of fabrics in their work. In the slide show at left, a brief look at 11 highlights.
Spartacus Chetwynd's rag-doll-like puppets hung outside the booth at Sadie Coles, sadly not in action.
These bundles made from Korean bed covers contain clothes. They represent the kind of packages the artist was familiar with, growing up in Korea, that people would need to be ready to pull together on a moment's notice, ever ready to pick up and leave their home due to political, social or economic upheaval.
Amanda Ross-Ho's home-spun sign, made of urethane plastic and hand-dyed, hand-plaited wool strikes us as a personal communique until we recall that it's a song from the Rolling Stones. This comforting slogan now feels more like an advertisement. We are at an art fair, after all.
This piece was a part of the exhibition "Men Oh Men," with Galerie Rudiger Schottle, for which Agathe Snow created a sculpture for each of seven men with whom she was romantically involved in her exploration of how relationships shape us. The guitar in this piece is representative of the "acoustic" nature of her relationship with Marco. The sculpture for Dash Snow, with whom she was married for nine years, wasn't in the booth.
At the age of 40, artist Judith Scott, who died five years ago, began making art. She was deaf, mute and had Down Syndrome. Through an organization called Creative Growth, she began to express herself artistically, first through drawing and later through sculpture. Hidden within these large oblong masses of carefully composed yarn is an object that was personal to the artist. A small toy or a twig, which informed the ultimate shape of the object, of which the artist created some 200 works. White Columns has collaborated with Creative Growth, an organization that provides visual art instruction to disabled individuals, for years. And this year, its entire booth at Frieze is devoted to a variety of artists who found their voice through the organization. And don't take it from us that these works are intriguing, not only for their status as Art Brut. RoseLee Goldberg, of Performa, dropped in at the booth while we were there. "Wow," she proclaimed looking at a wall covered salon style with drawings and collage. "These are incredible."
This piece, a fabric partition interwoven with a chainlink fence, refers to the different tropes of protest, and ways in which you can create a human barrier using your body. This diptych comes with a fabric covered book, which is a compendium of guidebooks on creating soft blockades during protests. Traditionally associated with feminist art, this quilted material reflects issues of class, gender and labor, and it made for an ironic reflection on the labor disputes surrounding the Frieze fair.
The art collective known for creating works from odd materials, like the 200-foot long plush pink rabbit toy, on Colletto Fava in Italy, created this enormous sculpture of rags and found materials.
This intricate work, stitching together ribbon, rubber, thread and fabric to create an immersive tactile environment references the artist's Xhosa culture and his experience in post-Apartheid South Africa while commenting on gender, sexuality race and ethnicity. Mr. Hlobo uses techniques traditionally associated with women but uses materials like inner tubes of car tires as a symbol of industrialization.
For this piece, the Turkish artist clothed herself in many layers of headscarves, each in the style of someone she knew, and removed them one by one for the camera. The work is a statement of the negative portrayal of Muslim women by radical right political parties in Europe.
