Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by British artist Sarah Ball at Frieze New York 2021. This will be the first major presentation of Ball’s work since the gallery announced her representation in November 2020.
The works on display are a continuation of Ball’s ongoing series of meticulously rendered portraits examining themes of gender and identity. This new body of paintings revisits some of the artist’s previous subjects by realising their portraits on a larger scale, thus allowing Ball to “open up” and explore the “physicality of painting” further. The artist references material such as newspaper cuttings, archival photographs and social media to inform her portraits. Demonstrating an acute sensitivity to the psyche of her subjects, Ball emphasises physical characteristics – which the artist refers to as a “mask” – that define how we outwardly portray ourselves to the world.