{"id":648199,"date":"2026-10-16T12:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T12:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/648199\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T12:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T12:38:08","slug":"sweet-nothings-urinal-cakes-and-headless-dogs-10-artworks-worth-seeing-at-frieze-frieze-art-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/648199\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet nothings, urinal cakes and headless dogs: 10 artworks worth seeing at Frieze | Frieze art fair"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ella Fleck<\/a> at Ehrlich Steinberg<\/p>\n

The raised platform in the middle of British artist Ella Fleck\u2019s installation vibrates under your feet to the sound of a male voice. He\u2019s whispering sweet nothings, intoning sexual fantasies. It\u2019s all based on third-party agencies that manage OnlyFans accounts, interacting with users, creating fictional relationships that horny guys spend thousands on. It\u2019s a greasy, gross, uncomfortable exploration of sex work on an industrial scale.<\/p>\n

Yuli Serfaty\u2019s headless metallic dog sculptures guard this booth, their claws sharp, their heavy teats dragging on the floor. It\u2019s a surreal symbol of femininity pushed to an extreme, a body devalued and exploited. A video shows the creature trying to escape the booth, and succeeding. The whole installation looks like HR Giger meets Wolfenstein 3D, but with a nasty, satirical edge.<\/p>\n

Repetitive, meaningless \u2026 Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2026 (a bitter pill). Photograph: Jack Hems\/courtesy the artist\/David Zwirner<\/p>\n

Finally, something to help you get through Frieze. Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija\u2019s sculpture here is a robotic arm that carefully hands visitors a little red-and-white ibuprofen pill. If you don\u2019t reach out, it just drops it on the floor. The robot does its job, over and over, regardless of if you\u2019re there to receive it. It feels futile, obscene, repetitive, meaningless. Quite the comment on modern life.<\/p>\n

It might look like a display of pens, and that\u2019s because it is. But each one is a promotional item from a pharmaceutical company, given out as gifts to American medical professionals. Lazzard bought them in estate sales from real doctors. They become a portrait of selling out, of how healthcare in the US can be bought by corporations. There are pens with branding for antidepressants, ADHD meds, Viagra: corporations are keeping you going, keeping you productive. When it clicks, it\u2019s an incredibly grim conceptual vision of how our bodies are treated as commodities.<\/p>\n

The urinal cakes in the Frieze bogs this year aren\u2019t just there to keep whiffs at bay \u2013 they\u2019re art. This is urinal cake as sculptural intervention, thanks to artist Gray Wielebinski, who has designed each one with a custom scent and encased them in metal cages. They sort of look like little chastity devices, glistening lumps of odorous chemicals for you to wee on. They\u2019re weird, almost erotic sculptures. You can hear the anguished cry of thousands of artists wishing they\u2019d thought of it first.<\/p>\n

Miriam Cahn<\/a> at Galerie Jocelyn WolffStanding out \u2026 Miriam Cahn. Photograph: courtesy Galerie Jocelyn Wolff<\/p>\n

There is such an overwhelming amount of (usually very bland) painting at Frieze that it really takes a special painter to stand out. But Swiss artist Miriam Cahn\u2019s installation is a proper diamond among the swill. It\u2019s a whole booth filled with 26 years\u2019 worth of self-portraiture. Each one plumbs new depths of anxious, monstrous introspection. She grins and screams, stands and falls, all in blurred, messy washes of colour. Psychologically intense, overwrought, emotional stuff.<\/p>\n

My love for 19th-century French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau verges on a sickness. I mean, I have a Bouguereau tattoo. So finding this little gem among the Dutch flower paintings and Egyptian busts of Frieze Masters was a genuine thrill. It\u2019s a weird, yellowed little thing \u2013 based on a Tintoretto \u2013 of a man lying prostrate on the ground. The ropes that bind him have been snapped, wood is splintered. Here is the aftermath of violence, the shocking silence after a traumatic event. This is one of the great things about Masters: getting to spot art historical gold hidden away on the back wall of some booth. This gallery also had a gorgeous James Tissot portrait. It\u2019s 19th-century art nerd heaven.<\/p>\n

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Luce Turnier<\/a> at Harlesden High StreetLuce Turnier, Nude Woman in Chair (1977). Photograph: Courtesy the artist\/ Harlesden High Street<\/p>\n

There are some amazing narratives to discover in the Frieze Masters spotlight section, especially the work of Haitian modernist Luce Turnier, who lived between Paris and Haiti but has largely been forgotten by art history. This small display of stark portraits \u2013 like a more sombre Alice Neel \u2013 and vitrines is a little glimpse into a lost period of international modernism from an artist who feels ripe for a museum show.<\/p>\n

Camarasaurus supremus skull with embedded allosaurus tooth, 145-155 million years old. Photograph: David Brunetti\/courtesy David AaronCamarasaurus supremus skull at David Aaron<\/p>\n

You eventually go antiquities and Flemish art blind walking around Frieze Masters, so finding the fossilised dino skulls that David Aaron Gallery has lugged to the tent is always a bit of Jurassic relief. This year they\u2019ve brought an enormous triceratops skull and an awesome camarasaurus supremus with the tooth of an allosaurus embedded in it. Absolutely brutal, and possibly the only thing my four-year-old would like in either fair.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s death and fear written into all of Sohrab Hura\u2019s paintings here. They\u2019re grotesque expressionist scenes of everyday violence: a man kicked to the ground, a crow pecking at a bleeding carcass above a figure staring aghast at a newspaper. It\u2019s like Edvard Munch but with way more blood and guts. The painting of the woman in the dust storm isn\u2019t good, but the rest are great, angry things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ella Fleck at Ehrlich Steinberg The raised platform in the middle of British artist Ella Fleck\u2019s installation vibrates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-648199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}