Frieze New York 2018

As a multidisciplinary artist working in installation, Carmen Argote explores notions of home and place. The works presented are created horizontally and are inspired by the compositions created by street venting. With these works, Argote is interested in organizing a composition outside of the western conventions of painting, and drawing inspiration from the way street vendors compose as it relates to body and to the intimate exchange of objects.

Pia Camil’s work is usually associated to the Mexican urban landscape, the aesthetic language of modernism and its relationship to retail and advertising. The material with which Pia works in these series of paintings are fabrics that have been discarded from textiles factories for being the last bit of the production; therefore they show printing errors. For the artist, these pieces evoke the relationship of contemporary subjects with mass production markets; moreover they serve as metaphors of the role of art within the market.

Otto Berchem presents a project that is inspired by the metaphysical code created by the Uruguayan poet Jorge Adoum, the writings of Vladimir Nabokov, Peter Saville’s designs for the first three New Order albums, and the condition of Synaesthesia. Based on these codes, Berchem created his own alphabet of designated colors, which are presented through a series of drawings, photos, and paintings of texts, where the artist explores the concept of guilt, failure and the poetic.

Amalia Pica uses sculpture, performance, installation and photography to explore the nuances of communication. Central to Pica’s work is the problem of communication, which she explores by setting everyday objects alongside obsolete technologies such as shutter telegraphs, slide projectors, and 16 mm film. Yet while her interest is in language, most of her projects are silent. She compensates for this apparent lack by adding texts that elucidate the missing parts.

Ana Roldán’s work is inspired by cultural phenomena: Historical events, philosophical ideas, language, systems, reflections on aesthetics; theoretical concepts in general. Roldán is interested in how the spectators can be stimulated physically as well intellectually through the opposition or displacement of the mentioned systems. For this occasion she presents a series of collages based on Mexican pre-Hispanic motifs on representation of death. And, a series of photographs of autochthonous plants of Oaxaca and Guerrero regions in Mexico.