Drew Sawyer's Five Favorite Works from Frieze New York Viewing Room 2023
The Brooklyn Museum Curator of Photography selects works by Farah Al Qasimi, Maia Ruth Lee, David Goldblatt, Carlos Villa and Jack Whitten
The Brooklyn Museum Curator of Photography selects works by Farah Al Qasimi, Maia Ruth Lee, David Goldblatt, Carlos Villa and Jack Whitten
FARAH AL QASIMI
Six Different Screams, 2021
Archival inkjet print in artist's aluminum frame
10.04" x 48.43" (25.5 cm x 123 cm)
Edition 2/5
$17,000
Presented by François Ghebaly
I’m a fan of Farah Al Qasimi's photographic work, which often explores gender, consumerism, taste, and power in the Gulf region through seemingly banal but visually complex images of everyday life. She’s also an avid fan of horror films, which is probably more apparent in her film and video work. This series, featuring six photographs of open mouths, may relate to screams from watching a scary movie, but like so much the horror genre, also serves as a metaphor for our terrifying times.
MAIA RUTH LEE
B.B.M Cobalt Umbra 1-43, 2023
Ink on canvas
59.02" x 59.02" x 0.98" (149.9 cm x 149.9 cm x 2.5 cm)
$10-20k
Presented by Tina Kim Gallery
Maia Ruth Lee has become known for her “Bondage Baggage” sculpture series, based on the luggage of mostly migrant workers which she observed while growing up or visiting her parents in Nepal. I love how this painting expands upon her explorations of symbols of migration, labor, and displacement but through process. Wrapping canvas with the same ropes that she uses in the sculptures and dipping them in paint before freeing the bundle, the painting contains an index of both its bondage and its liberation.
DAVID GOLDBLATT
'Location in the sky': the servants' quarters of Essanby house. Jeppe Street, Johannesburg, 1984
Silver gelatin hand print
13.78" x 11.02" (35 cm x 28 cm)
$30,000
Presented by Goodman Gallery
David Goldblatt had a talent for turning our attention to often overlooked details of daily life that exposed the hardship and oppression of people living under Apartheid in South Africa. Yet, he rarely did this in exploitative and sensationalist ways, as seen in this photograph of a balcony connected to servants quarters in modernist apartment building in Johannesburg. Here, he focuses on the relationship between architecture, place, and power.
JACK WHITTEN
Xeroxed!, III, 1975
Toner and rice paper mounted on stretched canvas
62.2" x 81.26" x 2.99" (158 cm x 206.4 cm x 7.6 cm)
$250-500k
Presented by Hauser & Wirth
I’ve been immersed in research on artists using photocopy technology, so I was particularly drawn to this work—I mean, it’s enthusiastically called Xeroxed! III, exclamation and all! Jack Whitten took toner from a photocopy machine, a technology engineered to reduce both the time and the cost associated with bureaucracy, to create this painting. While other artists around this time were using the technology to reproduce conceptual documents, Whitten explored its materiality and effects. Even though no copy machine was involved, it still looks like the remnants of a paper jam.
CARLOS VILLA
Kite God Coat, 1979
Rooster and pheasant tail feathers and paper pulp
87" x 109" (220.98 cm x 276.86 cm)
Presented by Silverlens
The survey of Villa's work was one of last year’s standout museum shows. I was wowed by the otherworldly cape sculptures, made with canvas and feathers. This one is particularly beautiful!
About Drew Sawyer
Drew Sawyer is the Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography at the Brooklyn Museum where he has curated and co-curated several shows, including Jimmy DeSana: Submission, John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance, and Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha. He has previously held curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Columbus Museum of Art, where he co-organized the award-winning historical survey, Art after Stonewall, 1969-1989. Other exhibitions include Isaac Julien: Looking for Langston, Allan Sekula: Aerospace Folktales and Other Stories, and Lucy Raven: Low Relief. Sawyer holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University.
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Main image: David Goldblatt, 'Location in the sky': the servants' quarters of Essanby house, Jeppe Street, Johannesburg, 1984, Silver gelatin hand print,13.78" x 11.02" (35 cm x 28 cm), Courtesy the Artist and Goodman Gallery
