Frieze New York - Lara Favaretto and Kraftwerk

Went for a run and walk around Meatpacking before the launch party last night at Moma PS1 in Long Island City

Favaretto's installations and audio, sculptural, and kinetic works balance between failure and aspiration. A sense of resignation to the forces of decay and obsolescence runs throughout her work—most visibly in her minimal cubes made of confetti, which decompose during the period of their display.

Favaretto represents the eventuality of loss through a recuperative memorialization, often recycling elements from previous installations as new works, reusing discarded industrial materials, and encasing found paintings in loose tapestries of wool yarn. The memorial form is pointedly evoked in a series that the artist calls "momentary monuments," which loosely adopt but also subvert the vernacular of public sculpture.


 Beginning with a swamp that she created at the back of the Giardini in Venice to commemorate twenty historical figures who have disappeared, and continuing with her sandbagging of a 1896 statue of Dante Alighieri in a civic square in Trento, she has conceived a series of sculptures and public installations that draw attention to the futility and impermanence of memorials themselves. 


Favaretto memorializes the body in a similar state of limbo, often through mechanical representations that gradually degrade: car wash brushes whirl repeatedly, wearing themselves down against metal plates; a platoon of compressed air cylinders randomly empties itself, blowing silent party favors. These animist machines celebrate their own absurdity, taking on lives of their own, while also reflecting ours.

PS1 is an old public school and some of the stairwells ooze school day memories

Car wash brushes wearing themselves down on a back metal plate

 Wool strung over a found painting

Fans blowing confetti into dunes

Lots of false walls and holes roughly made in them - need to understand what the scaffolding with red cord through them was about - Red Brigade in Italy blowing up buildings ?

In the Dome at Ps1 is a Kraftwerk installation - brilliant video on 12 screens around the dome with fantastic surround sound and a great playlist - the Robots and Computerworld being my favourites - amazing t think this music is over 40 years old and still sounds fresh and current.