Friday, May 9, 2014–Monday, May 12, 2014
Randall’s Island Park
20 Randall’s Island
New York, NY 10035 USA
Su-Mei Tse
Gewisse Rahmenbedingungen
FRIEZE New York
Booth: B52
May 9 – 12, 2014
For this year’s edition of Frieze New York, Peter Blum is pleased to announce a solo presentation of new
works by Su-Mei Tse entitled Gewisse Rahmenbedingungen (A Certain Framework).
Su-Mei Tse addresses the relativity of our perception of the world to encourage viewers to slow down and reorient
their position toward the seemingly obvious. She works in a variety of media and often fuses sculpture,
sound, video, architecture, and photography with haiku-like simplicity. For the fair, the artist has created five
new works.
At the center of the booth is a hanging set of wooden frames, each with a different size, thickness, color, and
type of wood. The work, Gewisse Rahmenbedingungen 2, was inspired by stretcher bar samples available in an
art supply shop. Tse’s composition of stretcher bars alludes to her conceptual interest in painting through
exploring its absence and emptiness relative to the frame as readymade. Similarly, the work Gewisse
Rahmenbedingungen 1 is comprised of three sets of wooden triangles which are geometric, rhythmic
compositions of solids and voids in different sizes that hang on a single nail representing a mathematical
selection of an almost infinite number of possible images.
The video, Gewisse Rahmenbedingungen 3, was filmed in front of the Altes Museum in Berlin, a building by
the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and is presented in a square flat-screen playing an intimately framed
video of a moving crystal ball. The museum appears upside down, as a clear reflection, within the ball creating
a contrast between the building itself and the floating sphere. This dynamic resonates with the blurred colors
and shapes of the background alluding to the smoothed pigment of a watercolor painting.
…et à l’ horizon, il y avait l’orage (…and on the horizon, there was a storm) is comprised of two photographs
that could evoke an expansive Japanese landscape painting. This work continues to explore Tse’s fascination
with distant memory, the passing of time, absence, and longing. Rote Leiter (The Scale) (Red Ladder (The
Scale)) is based on a hand drawing of a ladder realized in forged iron. The title presents a poetic ambiguity that
floats between the literal and figurative concept of scale.
Many of these works have been realized through a dialogue and close collaboration with her partner Jean-Lou
Majerus.
Su-Mei Tse was born in Luxembourg in 1973. Tse has been exhibited nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at the
Toyama Museum of Modern Art, Japan (forthcoming 2015); Centre d’ Art Contemporain, Château des Adhémar, Montélimar, France
(2014); the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2009); Art Tower Mito, Japan (2009); the Seattle Asian Art Museum (2008);
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006); the Casino, Forum d’Art Contemporain, Luxembourg (2006); and the Moderna
Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2004). Furthermore, Su-Mei Tse participated in the 2013 Dojima River Biennial and at the 26th São Paulo
Biennial in 2004. At the Venice Biennale in 2003 she represented Luxembourg and was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National
Participation. In 2009, Tse was awarded the prestigious Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco Prize.
For additional information and photographic material please contact David Blum or Andrea Serbonich at art@peterblumgallery.com
(Tel: +1 212 244 6055). Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10am-6pm; Saturday, 11am-6pm.