For the 2020 online edition of Frieze New York, Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to present a group of new works by New York-based artist Sadie Benning.

Benning, who is as well known for their suggestive and supple works in aqua-resin on panel as for their groundbreaking early pixel-vision videos, has produced a body of accessibly scaled abstractions exclusively for this online presentation.

Each of these paintings began as miniature 1” drawings made using digital touch screen technology at low resolutions. The compositions are then blown up with a Xerox machine to the maximum size ledger paper – 11 x 17”. These “copies” are then used as templates to transfer the drawing to a wood panel. The forms are cut out using a jigsaw; then coated with layers of aqua resin— which are sanded, painted, buffed, and finally joined back together.

Through this process of translation, information is lost, made up, and reconfigured which creates a certain kind of ambiguity and space for uncertainty in the images. The resulting works are both sculptural and painterly, the labor and care of touch made evident on their surfaces even as their bright palette refers back to their digital origins.

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Sadie Benning (b. 1973, Madison, WI, USA) is an American artist based in New York. Over the last three decades, Benning’s work has taken the form of experimental video, performance, and most recently mixed-media wall mounted works that trouble the distinctions between painting, drawing, sculpture, and photo collage. The material ambiguity and hybridity of Benning’s work speaks to a continued desire to forge complex relations between form and content. Benning’s work is included in such public collections as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include Pain Thing, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Shared Eye, Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; and Play Pause at the Dia Foundation for the Arts, New York, the Power Plant, Toronto, Ontario, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Their work is currently installed in Surrounds: 11 Installations at the Museum of Modern Art New York.