Film-making and art poetically intertwine at the inaugural edition of Frieze Projects in Los Angeles. The curator Ali Subotnick has brought together 14 works that are dotted around the New York street movie set on the backlot of Paramount Pictures Studios, with another two installed elsewhere on the grounds. “The results are magical, otherworldly, surreal and hyper-real but never dull,” she says.
The local artist Trulee Hall has created a fluorescent serpentine monster that snakes in and out of the windows and fire escapes of a classic mock Manhattan brownstone. Around the corner, clothes lines bedecked with garments painted by Hannah Greely bring to mind bustling residential blocks. “It is interesting to work with artists in unconventional contexts, pushing them to wrestle with untraditional limits,” Subotnick says. “This is so different from a park or a tent, it is an extra layer to play with. It demonstrates one way of bringing art to an urban environment like Los Angeles, a way of living with and engaging with art in the real world.” Subotnick points to the sculptural installation by Karon Davis, which depicts a high school principal and two students with antlers. “It is about how schools have become a site for the hunted,” she says of the work, which was unveiled at Frieze on the first anniversary of the Parkland mass shooting in Florida.