Our 15 Favorite Artists From This Year’s Hybrid Frieze Art Fair

The Frieze Art Fair returned to New York last week — both as the first art fair to launch an in-person component since everything shut down last spring and as a virtual viewing room. I took the time to browse both, and while I have many opinions about this year’s hybrid model, let me start by stating the obvious: I am not the intended demographic for a luxury fair like this. I have neither the means nor the interest to purchase art at this scale, and, for better or worse, a fair like Frieze is all about buying — particularly in a year such as this one, when the option to mount a physical booth all but forces galleries to put their most saleable items on view (in most cases, this translates to paintings). In my ideal, art-through-a-design-lens, pandemic-less world, Frieze — and other fairs like it — would show a more equitable mix of two- and three-dimensional works, the artists themselves would be on-hand to educate visitors and press about their process, and we would all be taking a gloriously sunny ferry to Randall’s Island instead of hanging out in the shadow of a failed mall in Hudson Yards.

That said, there was plenty to like about this year’s fair. At The Shed, my favorite booth was a sold-out solo effort by the Chicago-based artist Caroline Kent at Casey Kaplan. Kent, a multi-disciplinary artist and an identical twin, “revisits an ongoing motif of two fictitious twin sisters, Victoria and Veronica, who communicate through art objects. Kent considers the visual representation of non-verbal exchanges between the twins, a shared language predicated on kinship and intimacy in which one sister finishes the other’s thoughts with a gesture of the hand.” Another favorite was a sculptural work by Lydia Benglis at Mendes Wood DM, made from cast sparkles and chicken wire; it sold for $125,000. Online, I particularly liked Joshua Abelow, whose geometric, oil-on-linen paintings are a precursor to a solo show at New York’s Magenta Plains later this month. Take a tour through the rest of our picks below.

Top: Selma Parlour for Pi Artworks