The recessed.space highlights from Frieze Art Fair 2026
It’s time for our annual visit to the huge tents of London’s Frieze Art Fair to pick some of our favourite moments from the vast breadth of work & ideas on offer.
Frieze, the annual art fair that splits itself across London’s Regent’s Park each Autumn, is a lot. Its dense grid of booths presenting work from global galleries and diverse artists can feel overwhelming, like a supermarket where everything is extremely expensive and vying for your attention.
So, we took a trip to the main tent of Frieze 2026 to pick out 10 artists we thought made fascinating work at the intersection of art and architecture. From mazes constructed for robots to learn human space, to carpeted living rooms, empty interiors to emptier landscapes, here are our highlights from this edition:
So, we took a trip to the main tent of Frieze 2026 to pick out 10 artists we thought made fascinating work at the intersection of art and architecture. From mazes constructed for robots to learn human space, to carpeted living rooms, empty interiors to emptier landscapes, here are our highlights from this edition:
Emma Stibbon
showing with Cristea Roberts
Back in May 2024, Blair Kern went to Towner Eastbourne to see a solo exhibition of Emma Stibbon’s exploration of shoreline decay (see 00198). Two years on, it was great to see a towering paper and mixed media work by the artist towering near the entrance to Frieze, a collapsing wall of rock descending from drawing to material.
With sea-levels estimated to rise by 1-5m by the end of this century, Stibbon’s drawings and sculptures catalogue with a nod to the sublime, an aesthetic to both make beaty from spectacle but one with fear embedded. Alongside the 3 metre tall drawing were four smaller studies of crumbling coasts from Dorset, Sussex, and Norfolk – each made with chalk sourced directly from the landscape subsuming into the sea.
showing with Cristea Roberts
Back in May 2024, Blair Kern went to Towner Eastbourne to see a solo exhibition of Emma Stibbon’s exploration of shoreline decay (see 00198). Two years on, it was great to see a towering paper and mixed media work by the artist towering near the entrance to Frieze, a collapsing wall of rock descending from drawing to material.
With sea-levels estimated to rise by 1-5m by the end of this century, Stibbon’s drawings and sculptures catalogue with a nod to the sublime, an aesthetic to both make beaty from spectacle but one with fear embedded. Alongside the 3 metre tall drawing were four smaller studies of crumbling coasts from Dorset, Sussex, and Norfolk – each made with chalk sourced directly from the landscape subsuming into the sea.
Steph
Huang
showing with Public
When we visited the newly expanded Public gallery in 2025 a giant glass cherry sat atop the found shelving in the former fabric shop. It was a piece by London-based Taiwanese artist Steph Huang, who moves between photography, sculpture, moving image, sound, and text in their exploration of global food supply chain, systems of exploitation, and the outcomes of mass produced foods.
With a solo both for Public at Frieze, Huang continues this work with a pink, pop, and playful display, utilising recognisable branded packaging with oversized and abstracted sculptural forms. Consumer objects repurposed,storage turned into object, and presented holistically with the architecture and grammar of a boutique supermarket experience.
showing with Public
When we visited the newly expanded Public gallery in 2025 a giant glass cherry sat atop the found shelving in the former fabric shop. It was a piece by London-based Taiwanese artist Steph Huang, who moves between photography, sculpture, moving image, sound, and text in their exploration of global food supply chain, systems of exploitation, and the outcomes of mass produced foods.
With a solo both for Public at Frieze, Huang continues this work with a pink, pop, and playful display, utilising recognisable branded packaging with oversized and abstracted sculptural forms. Consumer objects repurposed,storage turned into object, and presented holistically with the architecture and grammar of a boutique supermarket experience.
Simon S. Belleau
showing with Galerie Elie Kerr
As if fragments had been cut from the urban realm, S. Belleau spare presentation offers up moments from an unknown place of unknown time. The section of newsstand kiosk started life as a film prop, painted green for a scene set in New York. Later, it was painted a darker shade and was transformed into a London kiosk. Later still, it stood in for a piece of San Francisco in another film. After taking ownership, the artist cut it into sections and considered its new life as a sculptural work, exploring how news and information is disseminated to a public.
Small digital screens are embedded within the pieces, each presenting word-by-word headlines from international stories published the day before in newspapers. The backs seem to be cut open to file papers, as if magazines waiting to be sold. On the wall, an image of unknown people waiting in another unknown place are printed onto layers and layers of paper, as an advertising billboard can retain countless strata of consumer messages under the surface. Information revealed, concealed, and occluded.
showing with Galerie Elie Kerr
As if fragments had been cut from the urban realm, S. Belleau spare presentation offers up moments from an unknown place of unknown time. The section of newsstand kiosk started life as a film prop, painted green for a scene set in New York. Later, it was painted a darker shade and was transformed into a London kiosk. Later still, it stood in for a piece of San Francisco in another film. After taking ownership, the artist cut it into sections and considered its new life as a sculptural work, exploring how news and information is disseminated to a public.
Small digital screens are embedded within the pieces, each presenting word-by-word headlines from international stories published the day before in newspapers. The backs seem to be cut open to file papers, as if magazines waiting to be sold. On the wall, an image of unknown people waiting in another unknown place are printed onto layers and layers of paper, as an advertising billboard can retain countless strata of consumer messages under the surface. Information revealed, concealed, and occluded.
Sholto Blissett
showing with Pilar Corrias
Young British painter Sholto Blissett creates magical realist landscapes which speak to canonical notions of the picturesque and romantic sublime, but somewhat twisted and distorted into an uncanny otherplace.
With a squint of the eyes, the river bend in a long landscape view may be that of Ansel Adams or Thomas Cole, both artists who created their own mythic landscape imaginaries, but Blissett seems to be painting critique of such idylls into his views. The worlds created appear to be vibrant, flourishing, flowing, and brightly alive, which serves to remind that such artificial notions of nature are within our mind, more than the world itself, especially during anthropogenic crises.
showing with Pilar Corrias
Young British painter Sholto Blissett creates magical realist landscapes which speak to canonical notions of the picturesque and romantic sublime, but somewhat twisted and distorted into an uncanny otherplace.
With a squint of the eyes, the river bend in a long landscape view may be that of Ansel Adams or Thomas Cole, both artists who created their own mythic landscape imaginaries, but Blissett seems to be painting critique of such idylls into his views. The worlds created appear to be vibrant, flourishing, flowing, and brightly alive, which serves to remind that such artificial notions of nature are within our mind, more than the world itself, especially during anthropogenic crises.
Munem Wasif
showing with Project 88
From landscapes of abundance to ones of abandonment. Mumbai gallery Project 88 presents an array of artists this Frieze, with Munem Wasif’s grid of photographs unnerving in their cold silence. Slightly reminiscent of Roger Fenton’s 1855 photograph of the Valley of Death, so to do these document territory of division and opposition.
The photographs, Land of the Undefined Territory, portray no man’s land between Bangladesh and India. The soft edge between the two states is one which seems to offer a new kind of space, of neither nationality but also somehow withdrawn from a land free from ongoing impact of man and our processes. Here, there is a weird wildness and sense of place outside of our normal ideas of occupation and ownership.
showing with Project 88
From landscapes of abundance to ones of abandonment. Mumbai gallery Project 88 presents an array of artists this Frieze, with Munem Wasif’s grid of photographs unnerving in their cold silence. Slightly reminiscent of Roger Fenton’s 1855 photograph of the Valley of Death, so to do these document territory of division and opposition.
The photographs, Land of the Undefined Territory, portray no man’s land between Bangladesh and India. The soft edge between the two states is one which seems to offer a new kind of space, of neither nationality but also somehow withdrawn from a land free from ongoing impact of man and our processes. Here, there is a weird wildness and sense of place outside of our normal ideas of occupation and ownership.
Yuli Serfaty
showing with Xxijra Hii
With a confident curation of simple gestures within their Frieze booth, so often cold and clinical, Yuli Serfaty conjures an unnerving situation comprising video, sculpture, and architectural moments. At the centre of it all is a hybrid dog figure, derived from the now widely seen robotic dogs designed by robotic companies entangled within the industrial military complex. Transmogrifying the robotic dog, these are altogether more animalistic, pulling references from the wolf that fed Romulus and Remus as well as a male-gaze art history with no shortage of titillating breasts on canvas and in stone.
The sculptural elements of Who’s a Good Girl, both the headless creatures themselves and smaller Geiger-esque bronze fragments, were made following a CGI film made in Unreal Engine. In it, the six-breasted, headless creature has been put to learn its environment in a similar architectural arrangement used by robotic companies to train machines. Here, however, the creature glitches, escapes the Escher-like construct and roams amongst the wider hangar. There is fear, but also compassion, threat but also innocence. Potential violence, but also feminine hope.
showing with Xxijra Hii
With a confident curation of simple gestures within their Frieze booth, so often cold and clinical, Yuli Serfaty conjures an unnerving situation comprising video, sculpture, and architectural moments. At the centre of it all is a hybrid dog figure, derived from the now widely seen robotic dogs designed by robotic companies entangled within the industrial military complex. Transmogrifying the robotic dog, these are altogether more animalistic, pulling references from the wolf that fed Romulus and Remus as well as a male-gaze art history with no shortage of titillating breasts on canvas and in stone.
The sculptural elements of Who’s a Good Girl, both the headless creatures themselves and smaller Geiger-esque bronze fragments, were made following a CGI film made in Unreal Engine. In it, the six-breasted, headless creature has been put to learn its environment in a similar architectural arrangement used by robotic companies to train machines. Here, however, the creature glitches, escapes the Escher-like construct and roams amongst the wider hangar. There is fear, but also compassion, threat but also innocence. Potential violence, but also feminine hope.
Marco A. Castillo
showing with Albarrán Bourdais
As if an amalgam of models from Richard Serra and Zaha Hadid, Marco A. Castillo’s Bass Relief works create plans of impossible architectures, constricted spaces, and optical illusion. Painstakingly made by precisely cutting through museum card and then layering up to create depth and stratification.
The eye not only dives into the dark holes formed by tunnels and overhangs, but across the careful composition. In it there is a sense of mid-century Latin American modernism – the energies of a Diego Rivera mural, the geometry of a Lygia Clark sculpture, and the shadowing of a José Yalenti photograph.
showing with Albarrán Bourdais
As if an amalgam of models from Richard Serra and Zaha Hadid, Marco A. Castillo’s Bass Relief works create plans of impossible architectures, constricted spaces, and optical illusion. Painstakingly made by precisely cutting through museum card and then layering up to create depth and stratification.
The eye not only dives into the dark holes formed by tunnels and overhangs, but across the careful composition. In it there is a sense of mid-century Latin American modernism – the energies of a Diego Rivera mural, the geometry of a Lygia Clark sculpture, and the shadowing of a José Yalenti photograph.
Ella Fleck
showing with Ehrlich Steinberg
Today, everything in our lives is underpinned and enabled by technology. Our humanity and our architecture is entangled in cabling, lithium, and digital extensions. Here, Ella Fleck literally reminds us, with a raised office floor under which servers, pipes, and wires are made visible through under-foot windows. Vibrating, it all feels insecure and threatening.
On the wall, three screens show a ‘manager view’ of countless online chats, each an imagined OnlyFans personality, wooing, exciting, whoring, and extracting from logged in audiences. It’s all an imaginary, but one rooted in training the artist took herself for a third-party agency created to manage OnlyFans creator’s conversations. Weirdly, these roles are often performed by men acting as women, for other men to read. Here, Fleck adds another layer: a woman as a man as a woman for men. The subterfuge and unreliability of it all makes us leave the booth wondering if anything else in the tents is real.
showing with Ehrlich Steinberg
Today, everything in our lives is underpinned and enabled by technology. Our humanity and our architecture is entangled in cabling, lithium, and digital extensions. Here, Ella Fleck literally reminds us, with a raised office floor under which servers, pipes, and wires are made visible through under-foot windows. Vibrating, it all feels insecure and threatening.
On the wall, three screens show a ‘manager view’ of countless online chats, each an imagined OnlyFans personality, wooing, exciting, whoring, and extracting from logged in audiences. It’s all an imaginary, but one rooted in training the artist took herself for a third-party agency created to manage OnlyFans creator’s conversations. Weirdly, these roles are often performed by men acting as women, for other men to read. Here, Fleck adds another layer: a woman as a man as a woman for men. The subterfuge and unreliability of it all makes us leave the booth wondering if anything else in the tents is real.
Lewis Miller
showing with The Modern Institute
Earlier this year, Glaswegian artist Lewis Miller had a solo exhibition, A Doll’s Room, at The Modern Institute. It comprised both oil paintings, including the work on show here at Frieze, as well as painted glass. The unpeopled domestic scenes portray an unnerving silence. Here, in Studio with Jackets, the simple scene may just be a space between use and occupation as someone has popped out for a moment, but the open window, closed off neighbouring views, and still light give a sense of unease.
With no human presence, scale is questionable. Is this in fact a miniature tableau made larger than life? We are unsure, but unsettled. Miller’s technique flattens the folds of material, deadens shadow, and leaves a crisp airlessness within the scene. It feels as if we could step in, but without inviting us to do so.
showing with The Modern Institute
Earlier this year, Glaswegian artist Lewis Miller had a solo exhibition, A Doll’s Room, at The Modern Institute. It comprised both oil paintings, including the work on show here at Frieze, as well as painted glass. The unpeopled domestic scenes portray an unnerving silence. Here, in Studio with Jackets, the simple scene may just be a space between use and occupation as someone has popped out for a moment, but the open window, closed off neighbouring views, and still light give a sense of unease.
With no human presence, scale is questionable. Is this in fact a miniature tableau made larger than life? We are unsure, but unsettled. Miller’s technique flattens the folds of material, deadens shadow, and leaves a crisp airlessness within the scene. It feels as if we could step in, but without inviting us to do so.
Marcin Dudek
showing with Edel Assanti
In the last recessed.space newsletter (HERE) we visited Marcin Dudek’s solo exhibition at Edel Assanti to discover a ghostly reconstruction of the Soviet Polish supermarket of the artist’s youth. Within it were reliquary like works that opened up to reveal childhood hope, romanticisation, trauma, and memory all adhered to the Pawilon supermarket.
Inside the Frieze tent, Dudek has created a near-memory of the plan of his childhood flat, a spatial arrangement perhaps familiar to many who grew up in identical slab-block apartments with identical arrangements. Here, it has all been stripped back to carpet, skirting, walls, and a single lace hang to offer a domestic framework into which the gallery present an array of artists considering ideas of home. Some of Dudek’s mixed-media physical memories are on show, scored, scraped, and overlayed images taking the home of his memory far from the reconstructed sanctity they are presented within.
showing with Edel Assanti
In the last recessed.space newsletter (HERE) we visited Marcin Dudek’s solo exhibition at Edel Assanti to discover a ghostly reconstruction of the Soviet Polish supermarket of the artist’s youth. Within it were reliquary like works that opened up to reveal childhood hope, romanticisation, trauma, and memory all adhered to the Pawilon supermarket.
Inside the Frieze tent, Dudek has created a near-memory of the plan of his childhood flat, a spatial arrangement perhaps familiar to many who grew up in identical slab-block apartments with identical arrangements. Here, it has all been stripped back to carpet, skirting, walls, and a single lace hang to offer a domestic framework into which the gallery present an array of artists considering ideas of home. Some of Dudek’s mixed-media physical memories are on show, scored, scraped, and overlayed images taking the home of his memory far from the reconstructed sanctity they are presented within.
