Barbara Chase-Riboud Frieze London
11 – 15 October 2023
This year at Frieze London, we proudly present a solo booth of work by the acclaimed Paris-based, American artist Barbara Chase-Riboud. The presentation features three bronze sculptures from the series Standing Black Woman of Venice (1969 – 2020), as well as six recent works made from silk pierced on paper in her signature automatic writing.
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Over the course of her seven-decade career, Barbara Chase-Riboud has created a revolutionary body of work which is defined equally by its inventiveness, technical prowess and fearless engagement with transcultural histories. Born in Philadelphia PA in 1939, Chase-Riboud currently resides between Paris and Rome. At a young age, she began taking art classes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial. After graduating high school, Chase-Riboud studied at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, where she received training in painting, drawing and sculpture.
Featured Artworks
Barbara Chase-Riboud’s work is characterized by a perpetual interest in transnational histories and an emphasis on unacknowledged figures from the past that shape our understanding of the present. The Standing Black Woman of Venice series epitomize this throughline in her oeuvre by invoking both ancient history and postwar art, which Chase-Riboud combines in a monolithic form influenced by her aluminium and fiber sculptures from the 1970s.
The works are homages to two of Chase-Riboud’s greatest influences: the sculptor Alberto Giacometti, whose landmark Woman of Venice series serve as the basis for these works’ titles, and the unsung female poets of ancient cultures. Rendered in luminous black bronze, the sculpture also monumentalizes the origins of the ancient world in the great civilizations of the African continent, a reminder that history is comprised of layers of forgotten influences piled atop each other, waiting to be exhumed.
In addition to the sculptures, six works on paper are presented in the booth, all made in 2020. Using a technique she has used since the 1970s, Chase-Riboud creates different graphic formations pierced directly onto paper using silk thread, reminiscent of handwriting or hieroglyphics. A celebrated poet and writer, the artist approaches these works similarly to her automatic writings and poems, akin to a visual, surrealist train of thought, also reflected in the titles of the works.
‘They are parts of drawings. I mean, they are handwriting and they are drawings done with fiber, but also as a kind of repetition of the kind of handwriting I used as embellishment for the charcoal drawings. The drawings and the poetry are one. They are almost inseparable. I never know where one begins and where one ends.’
— Barbara Chase-Riboud
I Always Knew: A Memoir
Barbara Chase-Riboud
I Always Knew is a vivid portrait of Chase-Riboud’s life as told through the letters she wrote to her mother, Vivian Mae, between 1957 and 1991. Chase-Riboud tells her mother about her life in Europe, her work as an artist, her romances, and her journeys around the world, from Western and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, Africa, the Soviet Union, China and Mongolia.
The Encounter: Barbara Chase-Riboud/Alberto Giacometti
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, New York
On view at MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, New York, until 9 October 2023, ‘The Encounter: Barbara Chase-Riboud/Alberto Giacometti’ explores the common ground between two sculptors who looked to the past in order to reimagine the art of their time. In their sculptures, Chase-Riboud and Giacometti both returned again and again to the human form. Giacometti often started with clay, modeling his works by hand before casting them in plaster. Chase-Riboud, who also became an acclaimed poet and novelist, favored the ancient lost-wax casting method for her bronzes, combining them with knotted and braided fiber, wool, or silk.
Celebrating the world creative capital of contemporary art this Frieze week #LondonCreates