Lifestyle

Already a global giant in its own right, Frieze has been making leaps across the art world over the past five years, hosting fairs in Los Angeles and most recently in Seoul. To add to its growing empire, Frieze announced today that it will acquire the Armory Show in New York and Expo Chicago. As two of the longest running art fairs in the United States, both the Armory Show and Expo Chicago will continue to operate under the same name and with the same teams, while providing business services, such as finance, sponsorships, digital and legal. Naturally, the question of what would happen to Frieze's existing fair in New York would come into question. But Frieze CEO Simon Fox told ARTnews that both fairs have "different audiences, different histories", which will allow each to "coexist very ...

Earlier today, Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto's giant Venus of the Rags installation in Naples was destroyed by an alleged arson attack. The artwork was first created in 1967 during the height of the Arte Povera movement, in which Pistoletto juxtaposed a statue of the Roman goddess Venus, which alludes to beauty and fertility, against a large pile of rags as a commentary on the adverse effects of consumerism. The destroyed artwork was the largest of several different iterations of Venus of the Rags that are housed in museums around the world. Naples mayor Gaetano Manfredi expressed "deep dismay" at learning the artwork, which has been housed in the city's Piazza del Municipio, was set ablaze. “Now, however, is the time for a response from the city: I have already heard from Pistole...

Chicago's Kavi Gupta Gallery is showcasing a new exhibition of works by African-Canadian artist, Esmaa Mohamoud. Entitled Let Them Consume Me in the Light, the Toronto-based artist is presenting a series of sculptures that probe into what the artist calls “Black body politics”, or a web of interconnected social, historical, economic and personal connotations of Blackness — both perceived by the Black community and non-Black people alike. Cinematic in tone, Mohamoud is showcasing four paradoxical sculptures that act as monuments of nostalgia on a road towards nirvana. Perched high up the gallery is a tall peacock chair made of rattan that is named to pay homage to an actress who once towered over her contemporaries, while simultaneously dissecting darker undertones to which the original pea...