The annual Frieze Art Fair, a major exhibition in Regent’s Park London, is a cross-section of contemporary art. A myriad of galleries present in their booths, showcasing a selection of the work they’re currently representing. As a gallery that has applied the principles of a boutique physical gallery to the online sphere, taking a look at what’s on display is fascinating. This year there were several exciting resonances between artists on display and New Blood artists. The work is not similar: it’s the output of artists with distinctive aesthetics. Rather it shows a comparable element in process or ideas, a connection that elucidates the currents in contemporary art.
We’ll be updating this in the coming week with more featured artists from Frieze Art Fair, beginning with one of the gallery’s longest standing and most successful artists. Scroll down to see notes on new artist to the gallery Will Copley.
Orlanda Broom
Orlanda Broom – an artist whose work is consistently in high demand at the gallery – makes organic, abstract paintings. Interestingly, she creates some of them without tools or brushes, instead through manipulation of the canvas. This creates flow from the layers of resin, which glows like coloured glass. Her vibrant works are portals to realms archaic and utopian.
Harminder Judge was one of the artists on show that sparked a comparison with Orlanda Broom: using lucid swathes of paint to incandescent effect.
Likewise Bharti Kher’s work showing with Perrotin used the mystical movement of paint in its application, creating large-scale, awe-provoking canvases.
Will Copley
Will Copley, one of the latest artists to join the gallery, resonated with an American artist on show at Frieze, known for his experiments with light. The culmination of James Turrell’s career is underway in a volcanic crater in the desert of Arizona. A structure is being built inspired by the celestial engagement of Inca architecture, and seeking to create a “controlled environment for the contemplation of of light.”
James Turrell’s LED work, “Incantation” was on display at the fair. Will Copley also works with LED on wood and canvas. As a result Light Paintings are both mystical and analytical, an admixture of the material and immaterial using colour as it manifests across both pigment and LED. The boundaries between organic and artificial, subjective and objective are in motion in these contemplative works. What JMW Turner would make of these contemporary theatres of light?
Will Copley graduated in Fine Art from Newcastle University this year. He was previously a RBA Rising Star, has exhibited across the country, and is a VARC 200 Artist in Residence; see some of his available works curated below.
Our take on Will:
If “watching the sun rise feels very different to looking at a painting of the subject” as the artist describes, these paintings are oscillating claims to vividness in the reality of light and its representation. This results in suspended, sensual moments of colour in his Light Paintings. In exploring that there’s no reality without light, let alone any possible representation of reality, these works are like playful sacraments.
Words by Maggie