London Frieze week is nearly upon us again, sending gallerygoers into overdrive once more—after all, with 160 galleries and over 1,000 artists represented, how is the average Londoner supposed to know where to concentrate his or her attention? Luckily for you, we’ve put together a dossier on eight shows worth braving the inevitable hordes, from brain wave-screening to infinity rooms (and so much more).
Elmgreen & Dragset at the Whitechapel Gallery. In This Is How We Bite Our Tongue, Danish-Norwegian duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset transform the Whitechapel Gallery into an abandoned public pool as a biting commentary on the gentrification of East London.
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Kerry James Marshall at the David Zwirner Gallery. Marshall’s first exhibition since his 2016 retrospective is titled History of Painting and seeks to answer the question, “In the moving image era, why make paintings?”
Pierre Huyghe at the Serpentine Gallery. Conceptual artist Huyghe‘s boundary-shattering show, UUmwelt, consists of an actual person‘s actual brain waves, projected onscreen for all to see.
Martine Syms at Sadie Coles HQ. “+ (1|The world is crumbling and depressing, how can I feel happy about anything.),” begins the press release for Los Angeles-based Martine Syms‘s Grand Calme, which fuses video, text, installation, and more to compelling effect.
Urs Fischer, Chris Burden and Joe Bradley at Gagosian. As a part of Fischer’s show, the artist made one of his infamous candle sculptures of GARAGE’s founder and editorial director Dasha Zhukova. “A wick at the top of her head will be lit, and the candle will slowly melt over the course of the exhibition,” the gallery promises.
A vintage yellow Porsche is suspended by a 390-pound meteorite in Chris Burden’s Measured installation at Gagosian, which also features a suspension trick involving a ton of iron and a Ford truck.
Day World at Gagosian features a wealth of new paintings and drawings from young abstract artist Joe Bradley.
Yayoi Kusama at Victoria Miro. Instagram’s favorite installation artist, Yayoi Kusama, takes on London with The Moving Moment When I Went to the Universe, which features Kusama’s signature gourd sculptures along with new paintings and an already booked-up infinity room.
