Frieze #251 May 2025

"Perhaps the beautiful is more so when not an aim but a byproduct."- Emily LaBarge

The May issue of frieze magazine is dedicated to artists and writers living and working in New York. Simon Wu profiles Lotus L. Kang’s innovative use of greenhouses on the occasion of the artist’s show at 52 Walker, New York. Plus, Emily LaBarge explores dreams and reality in the art of Kaari Upson, in honour of her first retrospective at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Profile: Lotus L. Kang

‘I’m doing diaspora rather than showing it. I’m inhabiting a state of being in-between.’ Simon Wu highlights the artist’s expansion of sculptural grammar, exploring material transformation and the body as a site of flux.

1,500 Words: Skin of the Real

‘The making of the work was an experience happening in real time to her body, to her alone.’ Emily LaBarge pens a tribute to Kaari Upson, whose uncanny mattresses highlight the potential of the discarded and dissolute.

Also featuring  

Francesca Wade traces how Gertrude Stein’s non-conformist approach to language led to a lasting influence in contemporary art. Julie Mehretu and Nairy Baghramian speak about their friendship and the protective quality of abstraction. Plus, a dossier by Will Fenstermaker, Marko Gluhaich and Jane Ursula Harris highlights three galleries to watch in New York.

Columns: Afterlife

Yasmina Price outlines how Rosa Barba’s cinematic sculptures archive the remains of time, light and industrial matter; Jesse Dorris writes on Tammy Nguyen’s latest exhibition ‘Paradiso’, detailing the power of translation as the artist reinterprets Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (c.1321); Danez Smith uses Essex Hemphill’s powerful poetry to combat queer erasure in the US, accelerated by Trump’s re-election; Rafał Zajko speaks to Sean Burns about how his sculptural works tackle circularity, labour and performance; Lauren O’Neill-Butler interviews Vivian Suter about incorporating nature into her painting practice.

Finally, Christopher Alessandrini responds to Noah Davis’s painting The Future’s Future (2010). Plus, Vivian Sutercontributes to our series of artists’ ‘to-do’ lists and assistant editor Cassie Packard pens a postcard from New York.