Frieze Projects: Set Seen 2024
For Frieze Los Angeles 2024, Art Production Fund presents the on-site public program ‘Set Seen’, featuring works that speak to constructed environments and how they relate to our perception of reality and understanding of space. These projects are in dialogue with the rich history of set design in Los Angeles and, specifically, the role that set designers played in camouflaging the former Douglas Aircraft Company factory at Santa Monica Airport. This program is free to the public, and select projects will remain on view through April 7, 2024.
Participating artists include Cynthia Talmadge, Matt Johnson, Pippa Garner, Ryan Flores, Sharif Farrag, Derek Fordjour
Cynthia Talmadge, Class Gift, 2022
Exhibition to be extended through April 7, 2024 in partnership with the City of Santa Monica.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Class Gift adopts the style of large public sculpture typically found in civic settings, including college campuses. Here the looming biomorphic abstraction has been treated like a bulletin board rather than an object of aesthetic contemplation by students. As a “gift” from the previous class, the sculpture is adorned with detritus from collegiate activity; sticky notes, flyers, lost notices, and a streaming roll of toilet paper, most likely courtesy of unseen fraternity members in a moment of post-exam revelry. Equally banal and melodramatic these additions hint at unfulfilled promises of both the academic institutions themselves as well as our aspirational views of them.
ARTIST BIO: Born in New York, NY, in 1989, based in Brooklyn, New York. Talmadge is recognized for her paintings, photographs, and installations that explore themes inspired by the darker, more romantic aspects of contemporary Americana and tabloid culture. Talmadge's art reflects her fascination with intense emotional experiences, the portrayal of those emotions through media, and the intersection of both.
Matt Johnson, Giant Shell Swan, 2023
Exhibition to be extended through April 7, 2024 in partnership with the City of Santa Monica.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Giant Shell Swan is an eight-foot-tall bronze sculpture depicting a classical swan made out of seashells. Similar to the trinkets one might find at a seaside tourist trap, Giant Shell Swan was originally constructed by the artist from found shells once inhabited by creatures of the sea. It was then enlarged to a scale that consummates a deity of the natural world. In the art of many cultures, the swan has often been seen as a symbol of wisdom, grace, fidelity, and strength. Shakespeare refers several times to the idea that although mute, they sing before they die. In Othello, Emilia says, I will play the swan, and die in music. Encompassing the beauty of it all, the birds’ presence symbolizes the fragility of life and the enigma of death.
ARTIST BIO: Born in 1978 in New York, NY, based in Malibu, CA. Matt Johnson’s artistic endeavors delve into the human inclination to engage with the world through the lenses of science, mathematics, religion, art, and architecture. His exploration reveals our intrinsic yearning to connect with the cosmos, comprehend its mysteries, and exert influence over it. Unveiling poetic dimensions, his work taps into the potential of familiar objects, often presented through classical artistic approaches. Infused with instinctive humor and an appreciation for art history, Johnson's creations unfold within a spectrum of materials that seamlessly blend the modern with the timeless.
Pippa Garner, Haulin' Ass!, 2023, Originally Commissioned by Art Omi
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Haulin Ass!, 2023, is a fully-functional 2003 Ford Ranger pickup truck with its exterior rotated 180 degrees and welded back together so it appears to face the wrong way as it drives. Adorned with super-sized truck nuts, the car will be activated and driven in the surrounding area throughout the duration of the fair. Commissioned by Art Omi, Haulin' Ass! revisits the artist's first major conceptual car, Backwards Car, a deconstructed 1959 Chevy with its exterior rotated 180 degrees, which the artist drove across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in 1974.
ARTIST BIO: Born in 1942 in Evanston, Illinois, based in Long Beach, CA. Pippa Garner has offered deviant solutions to everyday problems for more than five decades. Her diverse body of work spans drawing, mail-order catalogs, classified ads, custom cars, tattoos, garments, and performances on the streets and on television. In the mid-80s, Garner began gender hacking, viewing her body as an appliance that could be altered like a commercial product. Embracing pleasure, kink, and the perversion of mass-produced products, Garner’s work imagines ways to restructure environments, everyday devices, and parodies the contradictions of commodity fetishism from the 1960s to today.
Pippa Garner, ART-IN-THE-BOX, 2024
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: ART-IN-THE-BOX, 2024 is the realization of a public art concept that Garner originally sketched in 1995. In the drawing, Garner described the piece as an “over budget objet d’art shrouded until deficit is paid.” Playing on the cliché that creativity requires “thinking outside the box,” Garner quite literally places her work inside a box, like any mass-produced product found on market shelves. The enclosure features a strategically placed peephole for prying eyes that cannot wait.
Pippa Garner, Beauty 2000, 1992
Following her satirical catalogs of the 1980s, Pippa Garner’s Beauty 2000 amplifies the absurdity of the beauty industry with over-the-top skincare and cosmetic routines. Originally created in 1992, the zine is a playful exploration of unconventional beauty hacks. Through diagrams and detailed instructions, Garner interacts with her audience, delving into personal experiences while challenging our built perceptions of consumerism and aestheticism. The zine has been specially published for Frieze Los Angeles 2024 as part of Frieze Projects: Set Seen, curated by Art Production Fund, and is free to the public. The zine was digitized by artist Megan Plunkett in 2021. Many thanks to Sara O’Keeffe and Julia Meyer.
Ryan Flores, Rising from the Garden, 2024, Maestro Dobel Commission
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Inspired by Antoni Gaudí's The Sagrada Familia, Flores has crafted four spire-like sculptures adorned with mosaic tiles and vibrant glazes. The works further the artist’s exploration of historical themes associated with still life or vanitas paintings. The perspective, history, and culture of the artist are woven into the forms, offering a unique narrative. Flores continues his practice of extracting elements traditionally found in still life paintings such as fruits, flowers, and vegetables. In these works he hopes to embrace not only the art historical references, but to add elements that are related to his personal history and heritage, such as corn, strawberries, grapes and calla lilies, which are found in the regions of the Southwestern United States and Mexico.
The four spire sculptures are strategically placed among the natural elements within picnic alcoves of the park. Flores will also be creating a limited number of ceramic Dobel tequila cups specifically for the occasion of Frieze which will be distributed to the public throughout the fair.
ARTIST BIO: Born in the greater Los Angeles area in 1986, based in Los Angeles. Flores’ ceramics lie in the spectrum of seduction and repulsion, engaging with art history through forms of presentation, such as bodégon and vanitas paintings and still life imagery, specifically the fruit motif. This imagery carries multiple meanings that allow, among other things, grotesque histories to be presented through beauty. Each arrangement and composition Flores creates is an open-ended invitation to the viewer to draw upon both the art historical and contemporary associations contained within.
Sharif Farrag, Rat Race, 2024
*Races on the central fields VIP Day 2/29 and Saturday 3/2
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: As an Angeleno, Farrag perceives the relationship between himself and his car as more than a mere tool for transportation. The car is akin to a secondary home, a reliable friend, and a means of survival. While working in food delivery, Farrag spent extensive hours in his car, considering it an extension of his soul. In this project, he aims to transform R/C cars into embodiments of the human experience, envisioning them as a post-human representation that reflects our societal shift toward unity with technology.
Beyond the modification of R/C cars in imaginative forms, Farrag will organize races to take place on the central sports fields during Frieze. These races serve as an allegory for the "Rat Race" of competition and capitalism, symbolizing the relentless cycle of survival, work, and money that many endure. Drawing inspiration from the 2001 movie "Rat Race," Farrag introduces humor and creativity as a lighthearted approach to alleviate the stress associated with competition.
ARTIST BIO: Born in Reseda, California, 1993, based in Los Angeles, Sharif Farrag merges classic ceramics styles with his own improvisational building techniques, representing his hybrid identities through clay. The artist’s work reflected his distilled Syrian-Egyptian heritage, lived experiences, passions, and desires.
Derek Fordjour, PROCESSIONAL, 2024
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Derek Fordjour's PROCESSIONAL will be installed on thirty-three standard vinyl light pole banners lining Airport Ave and Donald Douglas Loop. The works were originally realized using acrylic, charcoal, cardboard, and oil pastel on newspaper and canvas, highlighting Fordjour's unique process of layering, tearing, painting, and repainting. Fordjour began the Player Series in 2013, drawing inspiration from wanted posters, athletic trading cards, mugshots, and yearbook photos. Fordjour offers dozens of serialized portraits as a critique of institutional systems such as prisons, auctions, sports industries and education. Notions of capitalism, history, aspiration, and autonomy converge in the sequential repetition of banners aloft, signaling the triumph of commercial enterprise.
ARTIST BIO: Derek Fordjour was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to parents of Ghanaian heritage. In 2018, he was awarded commissions for the Whitney Museum of American Art Billboard Project and the MTA Arts & Design program. Recently, he was the inaugural artist for the Building Art Series on the façade of MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Hyperallergic. He has also been featured in several publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Juxtapoz, Vanity Fair and Forbes Magazine. His work is held in the private and public collections of The Studio Museum of Harlem, Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA, Brooklyn Museum, The Whitney Museum and LACMA. He is a graduate of Morehouse College, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and an MFA in painting from Hunter College. Fordjour is the founder of Contemporary Arts Memphis.
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