Frieze Keeps New Yorkers on Their Toes

The month of May is known to arrive with a much-needed mid-year dose of optimism as our senses sharpen and the air warms. But it would not be quite as euphoric for New Yorkers if it wasn’t for Frieze New York. The celebrated art fair will take place over the first five days of New York Art Week, at The Shed on Manhattan’s west side and across the city. In an homage to the city’s history of performance art, the 2024 lineup of the art fair will animate public spaces through partnerships with arts organizations and nonprofits Printed Matter, Artists Space, Performance Space, High Line Art, and Art Production Fund.

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Pittsburgh-born dancer and choreographer Matty Davis will present Die No Die (The High Line), 2024 a performances that will unfold in multiple parts across the High Line, created with performer and director Nile Harris, writer Chloé Cooper Jones, Slowdanger founders Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight, and performance artist Bryan Saner. Known for his intense physicality and inventive scope of movement, Davis’ captivating choreography is rooted in his use of his body to activate disguised tensions and explore emotionally charged themes. 

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Sharif Farrag’s Gotham Grinders: Hamster Wheel, 2024, is just as likely to spike adrenaline levels. The exhibition, curated by the Art Production Fund, was first revealed in a rat-themed version earlier this year during Frieze Los Angeles. The interactive public art project will now take over Rockefeller Center’s iconic Rink in Midtown Manhattan and invite visitors to race remote-control cars with ceramic hamster heads, adorned with vanity plates and vintage patches. Surrounded by the bustle of Rockefeller Center, the playful installation comments on hustle culture and the vertigo-inducing pursuit of success.

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A much more intimate experience will take place in Artists Space in Tribeca. In Ellen Fullman’s installation Long String Instrument, the composer will move amidst a site-specific soundscape made from dozens of massive tuned strings. As she plucks each string with her rosin-coated fingertips, Fullman will play an instrument of her own invention, one she has been getting to know and refining over the past four decades. Chella Man’s film The Device That Turned Me Into A Cyborg Was Born The Same Year I Was, 2023, will offer another intricate exploration of the symbiotic relationship between sound and body. Presented in the Shed in collaboration with Performance Space, the short dives into the trans artist and LGBTQ activist’s complicated relationship with their cochlear implant. There will also be exhibitions featuring  renowned artists such as Brooklyn-born photographer Stanley Stellar and self-taught multidisciplinary artist Reverend Joyce McDonald. Of the 68 exhibitors in Frieze New York this year, 11 will comprise the Focus section curated by Lumi Tan and dedicated to emerging artists. 

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All selected performers of this year’s Frieze New York are expected to ignite sparks of varying kinds. Those lucky enough to be on the receiving end might find themselves on the precipice of self-discovery or swimming amidst multitudes of emotions.

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Frieze New York returns to The Shed from May 1-5, 2024.