Large art fairs like Frieze rarely engender positive associations in my mind. I imagine the hordes of collectors in their most dystopian, outlandish outfits guided by advisors whose faces appear AI-generated. The artwork itself is presented with one goal: to make sales. Often, curation is a second thought, and artworks are showcased as luxury goods, much like a storefront displays Dior bags. But the artist Dona Nelson—who showed a striking orange painting titled Through the Day from her most recent solo show with CANADA gallery—expressed to me how much she enjoys attending these mega fairs for the unique opportunity to see a wide variety of artists across an increasingly diverse range of galleries from all over the world. Even if one must see the work through cloisters of new money couples, designer dogs, and clouds of Tom Ford perfume, it could be possible to discover something truly great. The skeptic in me took this as a challenge.
When I entered the Shed, I followed a sea of people dressed in nearly identical navy blazers up the escalators to the densely packed second floor. Among the gallerists and collectors, it was delightful to encounter so many independent journalists and critics, each of us recognizable in our headphones and wry smiles of acknowledgment. I slipped quietly from booth to booth, struck by the strong presentations from South Korean galleries. At Gallery Kukje, Haegue Yang’s venetian blind sculpture A Matter of Fact (from Dan)—Peep Asymmetry was beautifully paired with Kibong Rhee’s painting There is no place. Christine Sun Kim’s unassuming charcoal drawing Echo Trap at Gallery Hyundai was another standout. There was an obvious sense of care and intention with the artworks and artists chosen, whose work often sang quietly but confidently from the walls. This poetic sensibility felt distinctly opinionated when compared to other blue-chip galleries, which often favored the kind of commercially viable neutrality that was guaranteed to be unobtrusive and unremarkable.
No need to disrupt a formula that works.
This was glaringly evident at Pace, whose two-artist display of Maya Lin and Leo Villareal left much to be desired. I walked up to a tasteful grey box, feeling transported to a luxury hotel lobby or some minimalist spa. It was the kind of aesthetic environment that implies essential oil diffusers and hot towels could emerge at any moment. In the context of the space I found myself in, Lin’s ambitious and often ecologically informed work fell into the role of decorative marble—yard art for the wealthy. The wooden plinths used to prop up the work felt like an arbitrary material connection to Villareal’s latest series, entitled Golden Game. These wall works of fluted wood embedded with LED lights are a lateral progression from the LED strip lights familiar to anyone who has entered a college dorm room in the last decade. I felt less inclined to imagine the harmony between nature, man, and technology as I was feeling like a guest at a posh, post-minimalist Airbnb.
I joined the throngs of early-career associates in chic all-black basics up the escalators to the fourth floor. Navigating the labyrinthine array of booths, the somewhat unassuming Campeche struck me as I came around the corner. I found a series of what appeared to be found objects, metal fan grills, with what appeared to be frescos. Highlighted in the Focus section, curated by Lumi Tan, Campeche made its Frieze debut with a solo presentation of work by Abraham González Pacheco. The Tepoztlán-based artist fills in the gaps that history omits through romantic, fictionalized images that combine narrative, myth, and fact into compelling abstractions.
Have you ever wondered what William Blake’s delicate watercolors would look like as ancient artifacts from a not-so-distant future-past?
I began to circle the booth to get a closer look.
Four of these painted objects hung at opposing ends of the space, flanking three large-scale vertical paintings on paper. The central painting depicts a Guston-esque tangle of bodies, which appear as arms in a dust cloud, each brandishing a fly swatter. What at first felt like a tongue-in-cheek reference to the buying frenzy of the fair simultaneously reflects a dystopian image of a barren landscape embroiled in conflict, complete with a red sky and foregrounded by a trickle of water which may have once been a stream. The following painting came as a relief: three cloudscapes stacked upon one another. The same hand that rendered a cartoonish, violent cloud now suddenly emerges as tender and earnest a few feet away. The gestures feel urgent but ambiguous, like a storm. The viewer is left on an event horizon, wondering whether they are on the verge of arriving or almost out of sight.
I turned to the painted fan grills on the leftmost wall of the gallery. The grills have a thin swathe of concrete painted with ancient-looking pigments. The larger of the two fans is painted with concentric circles and organic decorative patterns, like a piece of cosmic pottery. The smaller grill is the delicate yellow of cooked masa.
A sunflower or sunburst pressed into a relic of urban materiality.
Pacheco’s ability to oscillate between the mundane and the sublime, the real and the fictitious, is masterful and on full display. Together, the two works on the wall operate like mysterious machinery, two cogs in perpetual motion.
Pacheco’s works feel lively, referencing a thorough awareness of art history while contributing something new to the longstanding dialogue of painting. His poetic approach to examining his personal and collective cultural history imbues the work with a haptic sincerity that stood out among the rest of the work at the fair.
I returned to the booth again before I made my way out, admiring the cracks in the concrete and curling edges of the unframed paper. Each object patinaed in real time, never coming across as fragile, but resilient in the face of time, emboldening us to do the same.
Diego Juárez
Diego Juárez is a visual artist, poet, critic, and curator from San Pedro, CA, currently living and working in Philadelphia. He is the co-founder of SENSUS, an independent quarterly publication that highlights the diverse range of emerging contemporary artists, critics, and writers working within and from Philadelphia. He received his MFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture and his BAs in Fine Art and English from the University of California, Irvine. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, poetry, printmaking, drawing, and sculpture. His work gestures toward the sublime through the residue of industry, nature, and people
May 28, 2026