Frieze will present a performance-centered program for Frieze New York 2025.
This year’s curated series of performances and site-responsive installations will explore the intersections of sound, visual, and live arts. Featuring newly commissioned works by three internationally acclaimed artists, the program activates the unique architectural spaces of The Shed and the surrounding High Line.
In addition, Frieze New York has partnered with non-profits, including Printed Matter—the world’s leading
non-profit dedicated to the distribution, understanding, and appreciation of artists’ books – and the Artist
Plate Project, which will feature over 50 limited-edition plates by renowned artists to raise funds for the
Coalition for the Homeless.
‘Visitors to Frieze New York 2025 will have the opportunity to engage artists from around the world. The vitality of their art is not only seen in gallery presentations but extends to the auxiliary spaces of the Shed architecture and our neighbor, the High Line, where our visitors will encounter a series of newly commissioned durational performances.’
Christine Messineo (Director of Americas, Frieze)
Program Highlights
Audiences will encounter The Pin, a new performance by Berlin-based artist Pilvi Takala, co-commissioned by High Line Art and Frieze and curated by Taylor Zakarin, Associate Curator, High Line Art. Takala’s practice is centered on poking, prodding, and questioning conventions and codes to investigate the hidden rules that govern our everyday environments—offices, parks, shopping malls and other public spaces. This latest performance continues her inquiry into discomfort and behavior, using subtle disruption as a powerful artistic tool. The Pin marks the second co-commission between High Line Art and Frieze, following Matty Davis’ Die No Die (The High Line) in 2024. Takala is also a past recipient of the Frieze Emdash Artist Award (2013).
As visitors arrive, they will be welcomed by a new participatory installation in collaboration with High Line
Art, Immortal Coil, by Asad Raza. This work incorporates seedlings, cuttings and clippings from High Line
plants, selected with guidance from Richard Hayden, the High Line’s Senior Director of Horticulture. On
Saturday, May 10, participants will be given a plant and invited to walk the length of the High Line with it. At the end of the walk, they will be encouraged to take their plant home—creating a lasting, living connection between the city and the installation. Raza has also invited musician and artist Kelsey Lu to compose original music for the plants, and environmental writer Zoë Schlanger to give a lecture. Immortal Coil focuses on the endless generation of plant life, through sunlight and soil, and reproduces the High Line’s plantings on a miniature scale, distributed to the people of New York City. Raza’s participatory, site-responsive practice includes inviting Mediterranean winds into a Manifesta 15 venue and channeling Frankfurt’s Main River through Portikus’ gallery.
Carlos Reyes will present Freestyle Hard, a new artwork that transforms The Shed into a set of spatial cues triggering a timed soundscape. Part durational performance, part installation, it will be presented on
Thursday, May 8th throughout the day. The piece will feature, in part, live performances of bird calls–ranging from morning choruses to mating signals–by bird callers. These sound intervals will echo in spaces chosen for their “dramatic potential,” including passageways, escalators, and the coat check.
Freestyle Hard combines ambient textures and layered acoustics to create unexpected sonic encounters. Known for poetically repurposing transitional spaces and structures, Reyes extends this exploration at The Shed. Freestyle Hard conjures an uncanny atmosphere where fiction and reality overlap, and sound becomes a medium of transformation and coded communication. Reyes was recently featured in Flow States – La Trienal 2024 at El Museo del Barrio and is currently in an exhibition at Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim and a forthcoming show at Soft Opening in London.
Artist Plate Project
Returning after its debut at Frieze New York in 2023, the Artist Plate Project will once again transform The Shed into a platform for art and social impact. Over 50 celebrated artists have designed limited-edition finebone china plates to support the Coalition for the Homeless and their lifesaving services.
This year’s participating artists include Alexander Calder, Amoako Boafo, Amy Sherald, Anna Weyant,
Barkley L. Hendricks, Brian Calvin, Carmen Herrera, Cecily Brown, Charles Gaines, Chase Hall, Christina
Quarles, Cindy Sherman, Danielle McKinney, Derrick Adams, Ed Ruscha, Faith Ringgold, Jackson Pollock,
Jean-Michel Basquiat, JR, KAWS, Keith Haring, Lorna Simpson, Louise Bourgeois, Man Ray, Mickalene
Thomas, Robert Indiana, Sanford Biggers, Takashi Murakami, and others.
Each plate, produced in editions of 250 by Atelier Eighty Eight, is priced at $250, with proceeds directly
funding vital services such as meals, housing support, and crisis intervention. The purchase of just one plate can feed more than 100 homeless and hungry individuals. The first 100 editions of select designs will be available on-site at Frieze New York on a first-come, first-served basis. Remaining editions will be
sold via Artware Editions (artwareeditions.com) beginning May 13th at 11 AM EST.
Launched in 2020 by Co-Founder & Curator Michelle Hellman, the Artist Plate Project has partnered with
over 150 acclaimed artists. Since its inception, the project has raised more than $7 million to support
homeless New Yorkers. Funds from the initiative support emergency food and clothing, eviction prevention, rental assistance, job training, youth programs, and crisis services for those in need.
Additional Highlights
Printed Matter will also return to Frieze New York with a wide-ranging presentation of artists’ books, editions and ephemera in the lobby bookshop area. The pop-up will showcase the best in contemporary artists’ books along with a curated selection of editions and rare and out of print publications. Founded in 1976, Printed Matter, Inc. is the world’s leading non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination, understanding and appreciation of artists’ books and related publications.
The annual Frieze Library initiative, organized in conjunction with Gordon Robichaux for the seventh year, invites Frieze New York’s participating galleries to each donate one or more arts publications to the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The resulting selection of publications reflects the current moment through diverse artists, writers and art world professionals. The submissions will be on display at the fair on Level 8, with a bibliography of contributions available on frieze.com, and subsequently donated to the Met.
Frieze New York 2025, May 7th – May 11th, The Shed
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