Trending Artists at Frieze New York 2014
As the art world converges on Randall’s Island this week, we take a step back to see which artists are at the fore of this year’s highly anticipated Frieze New York. Since launching our preview of the fair last week, we’ve compiled this list of most-followed artists on Artsy at the fair. From American Kara Walker, who opens a monumental exhibition at the Domino Sugar Factory this week, to the ever-present Damien Hirst, a fitting highlight given the fair’s British roots, we present below some of the top names in contemporary art.
10. Kara Walker: Walker takes the spotlight this week, launching a major exhibition at the Domino Sugar Factory, in addition to her Frieze New York presentation with Sikkema Jenkins & Co. She is best known for creating black-and-white silhouette works that evoke themes of African American racial identity.
9. Sol LeWitt: “A blind man can make art if what is in his mind can be passed to another mind in some tangible form,” LeWitt once said. A leading exponent of conceptual art, he stressed the idea behind his work over its execution.
8. Barbara Kruger:Best known for aggressively directive slogans layered over black-and-white photographs that she finds in magazines, Kruger developed a visual language that was strongly influenced by her early work as a graphic designer.
7. Christopher Wool: Another master of text, Wool is acclaimed for his white canvases with bold, stenciled letters. The artist is currently the subject of a major exhibition that recently traveled from the Guggenheim, New York, to the Art Institute of Chicago.
6. Anish Kapoor: Turner Prize-winner Kapoor creates elegant sculptures that combine simple materials, geometric shape, and organic form. He explores the theme of “the void” in large-scale works, some with defined insides and outsides and others that clearly delineate empty spaces.
5. William Eggleston: A native Southerner, Eggleston creates photographs that monumentalize everyday subject matter, such as motel rooms and storefronts, in eccentric, refined compositions. Each detail is important, potentially conveying a sense of mystery or intrigue.
4. George Condo: Condo’s work is populated by a cast of characters whose bulging eyes, bulbous cheeks, proliferating limbs, and hideous over- and under-bites set them apart as a singular species, driven by art historical references and a pictorial language of his own.
3. Ed Ruscha: In addition to a new mural at the High Line, Ruscha takes over the Gagosian booth at Frieze New York, with his iconic deadpan text works. Despite being credited with a Pop sensibility, Ruscha defies categorization with his diverse output of photographic works, paintings, and drawings.
2. Andreas Gursky: In his resplendent large-scale photographs, Gursky captures the modern world, and its landscapes, people, architecture, and industries, in seductive detail. Shot from an elevated perspective, his images show the individual or granular subsumed by the masses or the environment.
1. Damien Hirst: Since spearheading the 1988 exhibition that would come to define the Young British Artists, Hirst has become one of the most influential artists of his generation. In addition to his famed installations and sculptures, like The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), Hirst’s “Spot” and “Butterfly” series have become universally recognized.
