Hauser and Wirth present On the Fabric of the Human Body at Frieze New York

The body has been a consistently prominent theme throughout art, and acts as a vehicle of exploration and expression for much of contemporary art today. At Frieze New York this year, Hauser and Wirth will present On the Fabric of the Human Body, organised by Gianni Jetzer. The exhibition reveals the ways in which Rita Ackermann, Louise Bourgeois, Isa Genzken, and Paul McCarthy have expressed their affinity for the human body through raw, visceral feeling.

The colours red and blue immediately bring to mind images of veins and arteries, chambers and valves—associations which lend themselves to the spatial organisation of the exhibition. On the Fabric of the Human Body mimics the heart’s chambers organised by colours; it sets up the hollow, muscular organ as an inhabited theatre-like stage, enlivened by a plot, props, and actors.

Isa Genzken’s mannequin Untitled (2012) welcomes passersby. Devoid of flesh and sporting the artist’s old clothes, its anatomical depictions of the human body evoke ideas of the uncanny and the doppelganger.

Louise Bourgeois’ gouache paintings, such as The Family (2008), reveal figures with swollen breasts and stomachs, painted in crimson red that bleeds out of their bodies. Their emphatically sexual characteristics, along with the reduction of the female form, bear strong resemblance to Bourgeois’ sculptures from the 1960s and 70s.

In Paul McCarthy’s Candle Erection 1991(2012), the remains of a birthday celebration are displayed through sexual humour. Two new paintings by McCarthy, The Head of W.S and The Head of W.P, develop the art historical tradition of the beheaded figure. However, instead of a fall from grace, the paintings depict transgressions of domestic violence.

Finally, Rita Ackermann’s seminal work World War III Around My Skull (1996-97) employs chromatic reds and suffocating blues to illustrate a collage of images from popular culture layered over a central hollow figure. The intensity of the work and its vivid colour palette evokes chaos and rage. These emotions are transformed into gestural, immaterial strokes of red and blue in Ackermann’s more recent Fire by Days paintings.