LOS ANGELES, CA.- Frieze Projects returns to Paramount Pictures Studios’ iconic backlot set with a series of immersive art installations, site-specific works, performances and videos, co-curated by Rita Gonzalez (Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, LACMA) and Pilar Tompkins Rivas (Director, Vincent Price Art Museum). Frieze Projects is an anchor program of Frieze Los Angeles that takes place February 14 – 16, 2020 at Paramount Pictures Studios in Hollywood. Launched in 2019, Frieze Los Angeles brings together more than 70 galleries from around the world and is supported by global lead partner Deutsche Bank for the second consecutive year.

Frieze Projects takes place across Frieze art fairs globally, offering a curated program of ambitious and experimental artwork beyond the gallery booths. The LA edition of the much-celebrated program features new commissions and landmark works exploring themes of representation, identity and myth. Artists presenting new works include: Will Boone, Tania Candiani, Sayre Gomez, Channing Hansen, Vincent Ramos, Gabriella Sanchez, Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Tavares Strachan, Mungo Thomson and Mario García Torres. Other featured artists include: Patrisse Cullors, Jonathas De Andrade, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Barbara Kasten and Naama Tsabar.

Co-curators Gonzalez and Tompkins Rivas said: ‘For the second edition of Frieze Projects we wanted to globalize the selection of artists, while thinking in particular about Los Angeles’ relationship to the Americas. Many of the works draw on the political context within which we are operating today. Latinx and Latin American art and histories are put into focus with projects by Tania Candiani and Gabriella Sanchez, while works by Gary Simmons and Lorna Simpson touch on themes of visibility, identity and self-fashioning in relation to the African American experience. Another idea was to bring in artists, such as Vincent Ramos and Channing Hansen to work within the archive and legacy of Paramount Pictures Studios, deepening the program’s conversation with its filmset location.’

The full 2020 Frieze Projects program includes:

Will Boone (b. 1983, USA, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA)

Presented by Karma and David Kordansky

A series of bronze sculptures reconfiguring metal die-cast toys to create new narratives and associations, while evoking a sense of nostalgia.

Tania Candiani (b. 1974, Mexico, lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico)

Presented by Instituto de Visión

A performative installation exploring technology and labor, drawing correlations between the forced work of Japanese Americans incarcerated in concentration camps in California during WWII and current migrant detentions camps along the US/Mexico border.

Patrisse Cullors (b. 1987, USA, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA)

Presented by LTD Los Angeles

A collective performance which uses dance as a restorative act to reclaim time, space and emotional energy.

Jonathas de Andrade (b. 1982, Brazil, lives and works in Recife, Brazil)

Presented by Vermelho

A video work taking an intimate look inside people’s wallets and their contents, providing a broad portrayal of people living in Brazil across gender, race and class.

Sayre Gomez (b. 1982, USA, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA)

Presented by François Ghebaly

A new sculpture of a palm tree cell phone tower, shining light on the ways in which Hollywood’s stagecraft has spread to urban planning.

Channing Hansen (b. 1972, USA, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA

Presented by Marc Selwyn Fine Art

A site-specific, fiber-based installation with a durational performance drawing inspiration from both Duchamp and episodes of Star Trek.

Jibade-Khalil Huffman (b. 1981, USA, lives and works Philadelphia, USA)

Presented by Anat Ebgi

Huffman’s first outdoor sculpture appropriates elements of cinematic visual culture and pays homage to Grace Jones in A View to a Kill.

Barbara Kasten (b. 1936, USA, lives and works in Chicago, USA)

Presented by Hannah Hoffman and Bortolami

Kasten gives a new life to Intervention, a sculptural installation that evokes the backdrops of pictorial and filmic production while echoing the Bauhaus and Constructivism.

Vincent Ramos (b. 1973, USA, lives and works in Venice, USA)

A site-specific installation investigating both the absence and presence of the Mexican and Mexican-American / Chicano experience within Hollywood film production, specifically through the movies produced by the fair’s host, Paramount Pictures.

Gabriella Sanchez (b. 1988, USA, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA)

Presented by Charlie James Gallery

Playing with language and imagery, Sanchez’s banner and other pieces engaging with signage on the backlot, reference Chicanx and barrio culture, notions of masculinity, and layered meanings through text.

Gary Simmons (b. 1964, USA, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA)

Presented by Regen Projects

A restaging of the artist’s historic work Backdrop Project first shown at Metro Pictures, New York in 1993. By taking Polaroids of passers-by and offering a copy to his subjects, Simmons explored the power of self-fashioning and authorship.

Lorna Simpson (b. 1960, USA, lives and works in New York, USA)

Presented by Hauser & Wirth

Simpson collaborates with a group of African American ballet dancers on a two-channel video, addressing issues of gender, identity, memory and representation.

Tavares Strachan (b. 1979, The Bahamas, lives and works in New York, USA)

Presented by AF Projects

A neon sculpture exposing the power of Hollywood’s constructed narratives in our contemporary life, while resonating with timely political issues.

Mungo Thomson (b. 1969, USA, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA)

Presented by Frank Elbaz

New bronze sculptures patterned on Amazon boxes underline the contrast between monumentality and ephemerality.

Mario García Torres (b. 1975, Mexico, lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico)

Presented by Galleria Franco Noero

A video and installation weaving together a 1981 incident in which Muhammad Ali talked a suicidal jumper off the ledge of a building in LA with the 1983 hit Jump by Van Halen.

Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel, lives and works in New York, USA)

Presented by Shulamit Nazarian

A performative installation with related photographs that co-opts and upends the guitar solo through a conjoining and doubling. Using two guitars grafted together, Tsabar and a partner turn the performative gesture into an act based on intimacy and cooperation.