Frieze Projects is the not-for-profit initiative from Frieze New York. For 2012 eight artists were commissioned to create artworks or installations around the unique setting of Randall’s Island Park in New York, allowing visitors to explore and interact with the commissions.

From spoken word to castings, all eight commissions are individual and full of the artists’ personalities and individual traits. The eight artists are:

JOHN AHEARN
In 1979 John Ahearn presented his ‘South Bronx Hall of Fame’ sculptural casts exhibition. A reconstruction of this series of sculptures (realised in collaboration with Rigberto Torres) will be presented inside the fair at Frieze New York, as well as a casting station where Ahearn and Torres will make a new series of commissioned portraits, live for the duration of the fair. During the casting, models are coated in molding gel and must breathe through plastic straws that extend from their nostrils whilst being wrapped in soaked plaster bandages that quickly harden.

URI ARAN
Using one of Randall’s Island’s landmarks – an abandoned ticket shack by the boat pier – Uri Aran has turned a derelict structure into a fictional examination room in which actors play the roles of doctors and patients. The examinations are filmed and screened live inside the fair. The project articulates Aran’s ongoing interest
in the depiction of authority figures and power relationships in the media and culture.

LATIFA ECHAKHCH
In her project, Echakhch turns a patch of lush, green grass on Randall’s Island into an enchanting mirage by mysteriously installing hundreds of tumbleweeds in an incongruous location. Typically seen rolling in the desert or on empty highways in the American Southwest, tumbleweeds have long become icons of classic Western movies and popular imagination. As a threedimensional still life, this constructed illusion invites us to re-examine a familiar object that is unexpectedly made present to us in an idiosyncratic context.

ULLA VON BRANDENBURG
For her project at Frieze New York, Ulla von Brandenburg constructs an outdoor shadow theatre hidden in a brightly striped tent reminiscent of a circus structure. Viewers of all ages are invited to go inside and watch a shadow play that alternates figures, tableaux vivants and music. Borrowing from traditions of commedia dell’arte, burlesque performance and 19th-century Parisian shadow plays, von Brandenburg continues her exploration of the language of theatre and the fascinating power of fiction.

RICK MOODY
Inspired by the fair’s unique location on Randall’s Island, Rick Moody composed a short story: a literary prototype for an undependable global positioning system. Conceiving Randall’s Island not only as a physical place, but also as an ideal site for imaginary travels, Moody’s anti-destination device emphasizes the pleasure of getting lost.

JOEL KYACK
Los Angeles-based artist Joel Kyack has created a country fair game trailer shaped as a giant body which unfolds simultaneously as an installation, a performance space and a large scale mobile sculpture. The trailer houses two games – one taking place inside the trailer’s ‘mouth’ and the other in its splayed ‘ribcage’. Visitors can play free of charge and win prizes of original artworks that are also part of the overall installation.

VIRGINIA OVERTON
Known for her recurrent use of industrial raw materials such as sheetrock, wood beams and cement, Virginia Overton’s sculptural practice defies notions of scale and site specificity. For Frieze New York, Overton reacts to the idyllic landscape of Randall’s Island by installing flexible mirrors among trees, transforming a minimal, seemingly cold material into a sensual, weightless combination of nature and artificiality.

TIM ROLLINS AND K.O.S.
Working on a 40-foot table under a canopy of large leafy oak trees on Randall’s Island, the collaborative team of Tim Rollins and Kids Of Survival (K.O.S.) conduct their first open workshop for children and young people. Participants join forces to create a choral painting inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, painted on score pages from Felix Mendelssohn’s 1828–1842 composition of the same name. The instrumental music Mendelssohn wrote under the spell of the play is relayed on loudspeakers at the site to accompany the work of the participants.

Mulberry sponsored Frieze Projects 2012