Visit our virtual booth

ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce participation in Frieze Viewing Room, the online platform hosting Frieze New York 2020, with a solo exhibition of new work by Melissa Leandro. Originally scheduled to open in New York City in early May, the fair has been recalibrated as a web and app-based edition and runs from May 8th to 15th, with VIP previews on May 6th and 7th.

Launching this spring, Frieze Viewing Room is a platform dedicated to creating meaningful connections with the world’s leading galleries. Opening during the originally planned dates of Frieze New York 2020, Frieze Viewing Room will host the fair’s participants exclusively.

As a specially dedicated section at the fair, Frieze Viewing Room will pay homage to the pioneering women artists of Chicago, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ratification of women’s right to vote. Curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm (Director and Chief Curator, DePaul Art Museum), who was just named ‘Chicagoan of the Year’ by the Chicago Tribune, the section will unfold throughout the fair, featuring presentations by eminent artists such as Gladys Nilsson (Garth Greenan), Suellen Rocca (Matthew Marks Gallery), Clare Rojas (Kavi Gupta), Evelyn Statsinger (Richard Gray Gallery), Faith Wilding (Anat Ebgi), Torkwase Dyson (Rhona Hoffman Gallery), Melissa Leandro (Andrew Rafacz), amongst others.

For our participation in this esteemed section of Frieze New York 2020, we present a series of new stretched textile works by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Melissa Leandro. Leandro continues to investigate place and time through personal memory, creating vibrantly layered, topographical compositions filled with her collected imagery. Specifically, the works for Frieze chronicle the last year of the artist’s travels, where she found herself oscillating between the landscapes of the west coast of Florida, the grass prairies of the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, and the sand dunes in Southern Michigan. Her recordings of these recent environments were combined with earlier weavings that the artist revisited, illuminating her continued exploration of overlapping memory and personal timeline.

Originally intended as an immersive installation, seamlessly stretching the physical walls of our booth, we present these dynamic works individually as sovereign parts of a whole, and a summation of Leandro’s current, densely layered practice.

MELISSA LEANDRO (American, b. 1989) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received an MFA in 2017 and a BFA in 2012, both from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has had recent solo exhibitions at The University Club of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Union League Club of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Rockford University (Rockford, IL) and the Wright Museum of Art (Beloit, WI). Recent group exhibitions include DePaul Art Museum (Chicago, IL) and The Arts Club of Chicago (Chicago, IL). Leandro will have a solo exhibition with ANDREW RAFACZ in September 2020. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections.

• ‘Julie Rodrigues Widholm Joins Frieze New York 2020’, Frieze, January 15 2020