Frieze Masters

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to participate in the 2019 edition of Frieze Masters with works by Chung Chang-Sup, Gotthard Graubner, Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Masatoshi Masanobu, Yuko Nasaka, Roman Opalka, Otto Piene, Shozo Shimamoto, Kazuo Shiraga, Ryuji Tanaka, Günther Uecker, Engelbert Van Anderlecht, Jiro Yoshihara and Yun Hyong-keun.

The presentation explores how aspects of destruction contribute to the composition and overall perception of a work of art. Featured in the centre of the stand is Kazuo Shiraga’s Chiyusei Seibokukan. Shiraga used his palette knife, his fingers, or his feet to transform energy into expression using his body. Chiyusei Seibokukan is part of the Water Margin Series (Shui Hu Zhuan), named after the Chinese classic novel that tells the story of chivalrous and righteous warriors who rebel against authority. Shiraga went through the theme of violence in search of mankind, inventing a vocabulary that reflected the human capacity for destruction.

Other artists associated with Gutai are also presented. These include, amongst others, Shozo Shimamoto and Jiro Yoshihara. Shimamoto’s colourful canvasses result from the destruction of bottles filled with pigment. The artist's interest in breaking open the underlayer of the canvas stems from the use of low-cost and simple materials, such as newspaper glued together with boiled flour. These materials would tear and break open at the slightest touch, and thus symbolise unintended fragility.

The search for emptiness and creating meaning through pioneering new methods and mediums was common with artists such as Günther Uecker and Otto Piene. Whereas Uecker mounted ashes and pebbles—which would otherwise be considered abject—as a meditative process on panel, Piene applied enigmatic patterns of small holes in the canvas’s surface wrapped in plaster.

The stand also includes work as a tribute to the visionary Greek artist, Takis, whose recent passing coincides with a monumental retrospective at the Tate. His work points to human fragility, with a firm belief that the essence of art, and of being, lies in what cannot be seen.

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is also participating in the 2019 edition of Frieze Sculpture Park with a work by Peter Buggenhout. This seven-metre-high sculpture is composed of what the artist calls ‘abject material’, bold yet brightly coloured, although the sculpture takes on organic forms. It’s this state of instability and incompleteness that resembles the stand’s central theme: destruction. Overall, the dialogue leaves the viewer with a feeling that swings between recognition and disorientation.