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Frieze Projects is a programme of artists’ commissions realised annually at Frieze Art Fair. Curated by Sarah McCrory, this year the programme includes eight specially commissioned projects as well as the Emdash Award.

The artists commissioned to create site-specific works for Frieze Art Fair 2011 are: Bik Van der Pol, Pierre Huyghe, Christian Jankowski, Oliver Laric, LuckyPDF, Peles Empire, Laure Prouvost and Cara Tolmie.

This year’s programme incorporates a number of unique viewpoints throughout the fair that will demand a shift in viewers’ perception, ranging from Laure Prouvost’s idiosyncratic signs positioned in response to the fair’s architecture, to Bik Van der Pol’s physical commentary on the environment, which will take the form of an abstract script writ large on a live text ‘scoreboard’. Pierre Huyghe’s aquarium demands that the fair audience looks at a micro-level, exchanging the chaotic bustle and bright lights of the fair for a dark contemplative space, whilst Oliver Laric’s web-based project will have a life after the fair, existing and spreading virally in new forms. Christian Jankowski’s project engages directly with the idea of sales and exchange and the value of luxury goods, whereas LuckyPDF and Peles Empire are representative of grassroots practice, bringing emerging artists, artistic social enterprise and new technologies to the 2011 fair.

The Emdash Award 2011 recipient is Anahita Razmi. She will present a new commission that intends to draw attention to how Tehran’s skyline was recently used by protestors after the Iranian presidential election. She will use Trisha Brown’s 1971 work Roof Piece, which took place on 12 different rooftops over a ten-block area in downtown New York, as its point of departure. The work will be presented as a video installation at Frieze Art Fair. The Emdash Award is supported by the Emdash Foundation, a private foundation with a mission to support new ideas and emerging talent across disciplines, from the arts and cultural projects to science.

Frieze Projects presents newly commissioned artworks by international artists. Offered as an opportunity to work in a unique context, the artists commissioned by Frieze Projects use Frieze Art Fair as a site to realise ambitious ideas in an exceptional environment.

Frieze Projects is commissioned by Frieze Foundation and is supported by the Emdash Foundation. Frieze Art Fair is sponsored by Deutsche Bank for the eighth consecutive year.

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Press Contact:
Sam Talbot
Relative MO
relativemo.com
tel: +44 (0)20 7749 4510
sam@relativemo.com

Frieze Contact:
Belinda Bowring
Frieze
frieze.com
tel: +44 (0)20 3372 6135
belinda@frieze.com

Editors’ Notes

Bik Van der Pol
Bik Van der Pol will make a full-size ‘live’ scoreboard, initiated by an interest in visionary architect Cedric Price (whose London Zoo Aviary is close to the fair). Drawing from Price’s interests in temporality and visibility, Bik Van der Pol’s scoreboard will be animated live by assistants who will constantly change the text to spell out a number of abstract idioms, quotes and maxims, providing a narrative for visitors to the fair.

Bik Van der Pol is a duo of Dutch artists based in Rotterdam who have worked collectively across art and architecture since 1995. Recent solo shows and projects include: The ENEL Award, MACRO, Rome; ‘Learning from Vancouver’, The Western Front, Vancouver (both 2010); and ‘It isn’t what it used to be and will never be again’, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2009). Recent curatorial projects include: ‘Too late, too little, (and how) to fail gracefully’, Kunstfort Asperen, Acqouy (2011); and ‘Plug In’, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2009). Recent group shows include ‘We Are Grammar’, Pratt Institute, New York; ‘CLAP’, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard College, New York (both 2011); ‘Portscapes’, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2010); and ‘For Reasons of State’, The Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, New York (2008).

Pierre Huyghe
Pierre Huyghe’s aquarium is a live ecosystem that will host a specific narrative created for Frieze Art Fair. This narrative is enacted by particular seawater creatures selected as the players in Huyghe’s aquatic performance. While the conditions in which the players coexist are constructed within a fictitious narrative, the behavioral relationships between the players are real and not scripted. The aquarium will create an intimate psychological world that will form a point of contrast with the atmosphere throughout the rest of the fair.

Pierre Huyghe (b.1962) is a French artist based in Paris and New York. Recent solo projects and exhibitions include: ‘The Host and the Cloud’, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris; the 2011 Berlin Film Festival’s Forum Expanded; and Gloria Cinema, Kassel; ‘Pierre Huyghe: Works from the Collection’, Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst (2011); La Saison des Fêtes, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía – Palacio de Cristal, Madrid (2010); ‘A Time Score’, MUSAC -Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León (2007); and ‘Celebration Park’, Tate Modern, London, and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (both 2006). He was recently honoured with the 2010 Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Contemporary Artist Award and, in 2012, will take part in Documenta 13, Kassel.

Christian Jankowski
In conjunction with a luxury yacht company, Jankowski’s project will employ a boat dealer to sell a full-size motor yacht from a conventional gallery stand. This luxury product will be available to buy not only as a boat, but also as a Christian Jankowski artwork. The potential client will be able to enter the salon to see the interior, and hear descriptions of the yacht/artwork.

Working in film, video, performance and installation, Jankowski’s work is collaborative in process, constructing situations that require the subjects to be complicit in his works. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, these participants, their responses and actions are often the crux of the work.

Christian Jankowski (b. 1968) is a German artist based in Berlin. Recent solo shows and projects include: The Perfect Gallery, Pump House Gallery, London (2010); Strip The Auctioneer, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York; Jeck We Can, Julia Stoschek Collection, Duesseldorf (both 2010); Now For Something Completely Different, BAWAG Foundation, Vienna; Above All I’m an Art Lover, Regen Projects, Los Angeles (both 2009); and Dienstbesprechung, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart (2008).

Oliver Laric
For his project at Frieze Art Fair 2011, Oliver Laric will be creating stock video footage to be published for free use as public domain material. This portfolio of film footage will be shot in and around the fair, using a number of specialist high-resolution cameras with specific slow motion and digital cinematographic features. Usually this material, held in image archives such as Getty Images or Corbis, is available to buy for use in corporate films, adverts and Internet ‘idents’, as well as on personal blogs and websites. Often acting as a mediator, Laric extends the offer of an anonymous collaboration across the Internet, collating and exhibiting the results in exhibitions as his own.

Oliver Laric (b.1981) is a German artist based in Berlin. Recent solo shows and projects
include: Kopienkritik, Skulpturhalle, Basel (2011); 山寨 Turbo, Western Front, Vancouver (2011); and Versions, Seventeen Gallery, London (2010). Group shows include: ‘The 6th Momentum Biennial: Imagine Being Here Now’, Kunsthall, Moss; ‘Based in Berlin’, Monbijou Park, Berlin; and ‘Memery’, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (all 2011).

LuckyPDF
LuckyPDF will invite over 30 artists to show and produce new work for a series of live daily broadcasts made at Frieze Art Fair. Film performance, news and chat will be introduced by special guest presenters. Visitors can join them in the project space studio for open rehearsals and live recordings or watch throughout the fair on special screens and wireless access points. Viewers at home can watch via the Frieze Foundation website so as not to miss any of the action.

LuckyPDF is an artists’ group that has been active in Peckham, south-east London, since late 2008. They are: James Early, John Hill, Ollie Hogan and Yuri Pattison (all b. 1986). Working collaboratively with an ever-changing network of emerging artists, they produce online television programmes, Internet interventions and live events. Recent projects have been at The Conservatory, Barbican Centre (2011); LuckyPDF TV, Nottingham Contemporary (2011) and Auto Italia, London (2010); and a residency at The Woodmill, London (2011). Recent group shows include: ‘Sleep Faster’, Arcadia Missa, London (2011) and ‘Tetragram for Gathering’, Detroit Gallery, Stockholm (2011). They have also contributed to ‘BYOB London’, The Woodmill, London; ‘BYOB Venice’, Accademia Di Belle Arti, Venice (both 2011); ‘Mill24’, Islington Mill, Manchester; ‘Yes Way’, Auto Italia, London; and ‘No Soul For Sale’, Tate Modern, London (all 2010).

Peles Empire
Peles Empire is a collaboration by Katharina Stoever and Barbara Wolff, founded in 2005. Their work takes as its source material Peles, a Romanian castle sited at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. Built between 1873 and 1913, the castle’s architecture is a clash of historical styles ranging from Renaissance to Gothic Revival, Art Deco to Rococo. Peles Empire has previously functioned as an exhibition space, salon and bar, as well as a collaborative force. Stoever and Wolff have reproduced nine different rooms of the castle, recreating them with simple photocopied montages. Themes of reproduction, reconstruction and transformation, as evident in the history of Peles have formed the thread of Stoever and Wolff’s production. At Frieze Art Fair, Peles Empire will install a bar that acts as a Gesamtkunstwerk in which everything – from the reproduced room and its decorative furnishings, to the serving of guests and taking part in the fair – is part of the work.

Katharina Stoever (b.1982) and Barbara Wolff (b. 1980) are German artists based in London. Exhibitions presented in the Peles Empire spaces in London and Cluj include: Shannon Bool (2011); ‘Paul McCarthy’s Cap’, and Kerstin Kmelka, (2010). Peles Empire shows in other locations include ‘Men’, ORTON.nl, Rotterdam; ‘The Big Armory,’ Maes & Matthys Gallery, Antwerp (both 2009); and ‘The Mystery of Life’ at MAK Center for Art & Architecture at the Schindler House, Los Angeles (2007). Group shows include: ‘Space Revised’, GAK, Bremen (2009).

Laure Prouvost
Laure Prouvost’s idiosyncratic installations are cacophonous environments centred on domestic objects, film, sound and that often invoke loose narratives based on a single event. Humorous, irreverent, and discordant, these installations include a number of hand- painted signs that purport to instil some order into the situation, but often offer little clarity. Playing with issues of language, translation and authority, or with ideas around space and disorientation, the signs are often funny, sometimes sweet, occasionally straightforward and instructional. Prouvost’s signs for Frieze Projects will be made in the days preceding the fair as a response to the architecture of the space and the movement of its audience.

Laure Prouvost (b.1978) is a French artist based in London. Recent solo projects include: before, before. before it was, the title sequence, spinning before next, a squid, MOT International, London (2011); It, heat, hit, Art Now Lightbox, Tate Britain, London (2010); Storeybored, After the Butcher, Berlin; and Burrow Me, Lighthouse, Brighton, (both 2009). Recent group shows include: ‘Subjective Projections’, Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefeld; ‘Time Again’, Sculpture Centre, New York; ‘Between Here and There’, Calder Foundation, New York, (all 2011); ‘Avec Excoffon’, IFF Galerie, Marseille (2010); and ‘The Know Unknows’, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2009. In 2010 Prouvost received a Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network award. In 2011 she was nominated for the MaxMara Art Prize for Women and was the principle prize winner at the 57th Oberhausen film festival.

Cara Tolmie
Cara Tolmie’s practice spans installation, performance, video, music, text and spoken word. For Frieze Art Fair she will make a new performance that centres upon the voice and narrative as devices that will construct a postulated fictional space. The performance will map out the laws of this space within the space of the fair, purely through methods of performance – song, movement and spoken word. Often Tolmie’s work extracts narrative and meaning from a simple starting point, perhaps a short piece of video or an image, which then multiplies and expands exponentially to provide source material for a full body of work – by analysing a simple landscape she may write a script, develop a voice performance or shoot a film.

Cara Tolmie (b.1984) is a Scottish artist based in London. Recent solo shows include: Read Thou Art and Read Thou Shalt Remain, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, (2011); and Sierra Metro, Edinburgh (2008). Group shows include: ‘Maybe I should have called it ‘My life in nineteen minutes‘’, The Clocktower Gallery, New York; ‘Graham Ball’, Grand Union, Birmingham, (both 2011); ‘Young London’, The Biscuit Factory, London; ‘The Voice is a Language’, Tramway, Glasgow; and ‘21st Century’, Chisenhale Gallery, London (all 2010). Forthcoming shows in 2011 will be at S1, Sheffield and Supplement Gallery, London.

Emdash Foundation
Founded by Andrea Dibelius in 2010, Emdash is a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to promoting new ideas across disciplines, from artistic and cultural projects to scientific research. As its first project, the Emdash Foundation is supporting Frieze Projects and the Emdash Award. For more information on the Emdash Foundation, please visit emdashfoundation.com