Frieze Los Angeles

Featuring: The Pleasures of Picasso: Peter Saul & Keiichi Tanaami

February 20 – 23, 2025
Booth C06

Santa Monica Airport
3027 Airport Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90405

(Los Angeles, CA) – Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to announce its participation in the 2025 edition of Frieze Los Angeles, with a presentation that foregrounds dialogues between pioneering historical figures and contemporary voices. Anchoring the presentation is Peter Saul & Keiichi Tanaami: The Pleasures of Picasso, which unites two venerated masters in direct dialogue for the first time, each reimagining the legacy of Pablo Picasso with irreverent wit and inventive style. Complementing this exchange, the gallery will also present a focused selection of both historic and contemporary works by Joan Brown, Maurizio Cattelan, Richard Mayhew, Karen Kilimnik, Brad Kahlhamer, Sally Gabori, John Pule, Susumu Kamijo, and Seth Becker, among others.

“The Pleasures of Picasso” spotlights how Peter Saul and Keiichi Tanaami each transform Picasso’s enduring influence into something entirely their own. Known for his audacious reworkings of Pop icons and art-historical subjects, Saul here reveals his historic—and never before exhibited—Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror, which deconstructs and reconfigures one of Picasso’s most famous paintings with trademark distortion and vivid color, infusing the original composition with cartoonish provocation and sly wit. In a complementary exchange, Tanaami—who completed his final “Pleasure of Picasso” paintings before his passing in 2024—filters Picasso’s images through a kaleidoscopic, Pop-inflected style. The presentation also includes one of his large-scale collage-on-canvas works, which channels the modern master’s spirit through exuberant layering and irreverent shifts in scale. Their combined transformations underscore how icons of modernism can be revered, parodied, and radically reconfigured across global contexts.

Beyond Saul and Tanaami, the booth orchestrates a dynamic conversation among a diverse group of artists. Joan Brown’s Summer Solstice and Richard Mayhew’s Spring Interlude reflect a shared fascination with color’s lyrical and meditative possibilities, each evoking a personal sense of transformation. Maurizio Cattelan and Karen Kilimnik explore the allure and excess of cultural mythmaking in subversive and fantastical ways. Brad Kahlhamer, Lonnie Holley, Jimmie Durham, and Sally Gabori intertwine found materials, cultural memory, and personal mythologies to reframe ideas of identity and place. John Pule, Seth Becker, and Susumu Kamijo further extend this global dialogue, blending tradition and dreamlike invention to reveal painting’s enduring capacity for reinvention.

Taken together, the works on view reflect Venus Over Manhattan’s commitment to sparking fresh conversations between historically significant figures and the most forward-thinking practitioners of today. By uniting visionary masters with new voices, the gallery reaffirms art’s capacity for constant evolution across cultural and temporal boundaries.
 

ABOUT VENUS OVER MANHATTAN

Venus Over Manhattan is dedicated to illuminating the work of a diverse range of historical and contemporary artists through dynamic rotating exhibitions and scholarly publications. Since it was founded by Adam Lindemann in 2012, the gallery has been responsible for revitalizing and establishing commercial, scholarly, and public interest for artists such as Peter Saul, Richard Mayhew, and Joan Brown. Venus Over Manhattan operates from Great Jones Street in New York City, and its distinct exhibitions program, which has recently featured works by Claude Lawrence, Peter Saul, Richard Mayhew, Chéri Samba, Keiichi Tanaami, and Joan Brown, attracts a broad spectrum of collectors, curators, writers, and arts enthusiasts. As art world trends continue to shift, Venus Over Manhattan remains steadfast in its focus on the discovery of artists across generations, geographies, and cultures and to expanding the depth of artists celebrated across global institutions, by audiences, and within the art market.

For additional information about the presentation and availability, please contact the gallery at info@venusovermanhattan.com