Roberts Projects is pleased to return to Frieze Los Angeles with a curated selection of new, recent and historical works by Luke Agada, Amoako Boafo, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Aaron Glasson, Suchitra Mattai, Mia Middleton, Collins Obijiaku, Wendy Red Star, Betye Saar and Kehinde Wiley that consider the slippages between perception and representation while embodying a visionary aesthetic.
Ranging from friends and acquaintances to public figures and fictional characters, Amoako Boafo’s paintings of Black subjects enrich the vital dialogue between contemporary and historical forms of portraiture which characterizes his body of work. Titled I Bring Home with Me, Boafo’s third solo exhibition with Roberts Projects features a group of new paintings integrated within an architectural re-creation of the artist’s studio in Accra, Ghana, built to scale inside the gallery. I Bring Home with Me will be on view at the gallery for the duration of the fair before closing on March 21.
Wendy Red Star’s multidisciplinary practice recontextualizes American history to center Apsáalooke (Crow) cultural practices and knowledge transmission, allowing her to highlight underrepresented aspects of Apsáalooke history intertwined with critical insight. At this year’s fair, Red Star will debut a multimedia installation alongside new photo based works from her Reservation Pop series in which she collages digital photos of the unique homes that characterize the visual landscape of the Crow reservation in Montana. Red Star has said,
“My work often looks at the normalcies of everyday Crow life. The mundane that connects Crow people to all people and connects all people to a common humanity. Taking a closer look at each house gives clues to the lives of the owners, the community, environment and life on the Crow reservation.”
Through a combination of oil paintings and charcoal drawings on canvas, Luke Agada fuses surrealist ideation, automatist process and abstract-expressionist gesture into a visual vocabulary depicting the complexities of memory, experience and post-colonial theory. Daniel Crews-Chubb combines references to Aztec deities and Hindu gods with more recent art historical influences—such as Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and the CoBrA movement—into painterly compositions that center the figure as a vessel of universal experience. Mia Middleton captures the threshold between conscious and subconscious in paintings that imbue the banality of existence with sensations of foreboding and anticipation. Ahead of her upcoming solo exhibition with the gallery this fall, our booth will feature two new paintings that visualize Middleton’s internal world and its complex psyche. Drawing on her Indo-Caribbean heritage, Suchitra Mattai combines richly-colored textiles, found objects and other materials to create mixed-media works that reimagine the past while centering the perspectives of women and people of color, especially those from South Asia.
In honor of Betye Saar’s centennial year, our booth features a special presentation of her experimental photographs in dialogue with sketchbooks and archival materials from a 1994 residency at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy, where Saar used her Polaroid camera as an artist’s tool alongside her skills in printmaking, collage and design. Photographing gardens, fine art objects and architectural details in the villas throughout town, Saar created striking photographic compositions by intuitively scratching, drawing and pressing into the surface of the photographs as they developed, producing entirely unique and unexpected results. Comprised of ten mixed-media wall assemblages created over almost as many years, this little-known series of work is a testament to Saar’s mastery of her craft and the enduring power of her practice.
Saar’s centennial celebration continues this summer with Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar, an exhibition that examines her early career in costume and jewelry design in the 1960s and 1970s to reveal the longstanding impact of this pivotal era on her pioneering work in assemblage and installation. Bringing together more than 100 objects created throughout Saar’s lifetime—including artworks, clothing, jewelry, drawings, greeting cards, photos and archival materials—this exhibition offers new insight into her singular artistic perspective and multi-generational body of work by connecting Saar’s projects in commercial design with her fine art practice. Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar will be on view at Roberts Projects from May 30 through August 22 and accompanied by a forthcoming catalogue.
Seen as a whole, our presentation embraces the fluid interplay between historic narrative, lived experience and ineffable forces of change which shape our perception of reality.
Roberts Projects booth is located at A2.
For additional information regarding Frieze Los Angeles, the please visit frieze.com
For additional information, please contact Clare Joelson, Associate Director at 1.323.549.0223 or clare@robertsprojectsla.com
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