Curated with imaginative flair by artist Mike Chavez-Dawson, David Shrigley’s recent drawings, paintings and sculptures are presented here as a series of mock art-therapy sessions. Best known for his one-liner drawings, available as greetings cards, Shrigley perhaps edges dangerously close to populist wackiness. Then again, I suspect he would just as gladly be taken as an irreverent comedian as a neo-Dadaist subversive; he has, after all, invited Harry Hill to perform guided tours of the show (1 Dec, book via cornerhouse.org). At its best, there’s a deep sadness at life’s tragic contingencies underlying Shrigley’s deceptively throwaway counter-cultural daftness.
Cornerhouse, Sat 6 Oct to 6 Jan
RC
How's My Brain (2012), by David Shrigley Photograph: PR
Aeneas Wilder creates site-specific sculptures like modernist mazes. Painstakingly built up by hand by the artist, his interior architectural structures are free-standing walled grids of some 10,000 wooden slats held together solely by gravity and compositional tension. The sculptural charm of Wilder’s work relies very much on its precariousness: at any moment during the exhibition’s run some clumsy visitor could bring the whole lot tumbling down like an abstract stack of dominos. But hopefully the delicately balanced Untitled #162 (inspired by Wilder’s first-hand experience of last year’s tsunami in Iwate, Japan) will stand firm until the advertised “kick down” in early December when the artist will deliberately destroy his own creation.
Warwick Arts Centre, Sat 6 Oct to 1 Dec
RC Photograph: Jim Varney
A two-part show: the one at Vane is titled All Of Me Is Asking, All Of Me Is Thinking, while the one at Customs House is Pardon Me For Asking, Pardon Me For Thinking. In both, Epstein presents thematically enigmatic and aesthetically ambiguous paintings that look like large-scale collages of fragments lifted from disconnected sources. Like details of spaced-out painterly hallucinations by the late master of this kind of thing, Sigmar Polke, Epstein’s layered semi-abstractions are a pile-up of repetitive pixilations, TV interference and tasteless curtains. It’s a heady yet bracing mix.
Vane, Newcastle, to 24 Nov; Customs House, South Shields, from 5 Oct to 17 Nov
RC
Nimble elephant/Careening Dancer (large) #3 (2012), by Mark Joshua Epstein Photograph: PR
Over the last 15 years Matti Braun has been interested in the way that ideas can shape-shift between cultures. His focus here is the 80s sci-fi classic ET and its relationship with The Alien, an unrealised script by Satyajit Ray. Another cultural clash is provided by photographs of his set for a theatre adaptation of Ray’s screenplay which drew inspiration from French conceptual artist Daniel Buren.
Arnolfini, from Sat 6 Oct to 6 Jan
SS
The Alien (2006), by Matti Braun Photograph: PR
There’s slightly less danger of getting lost in the Aladdin’s Cave of high culture and hard commerce that is the Frieze Art Fair (NW1, Thu 11 to 14 Oct) this year. Model-turned-chef Sophie Dahl and astronomer Patrick Moore are among the guest speakers giving their take on artworks, on an audio guide courtesy of Emdash award-winner Cécile B Evans. Complementing row-upon-row of big-bucks razzmatazz from international galleries, Frieze’s other not-for-profit commissions include cult German pop artist Thomas Bayrle’s densely patterned wallpapers, here using images of loafers and bovine pin-up The Laughing Cow.
SS
Actaeon (Study for Diana & Actaeon) (2012), by Chris Ofili Photograph: PR
Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska, meanwhile, attempts to eke some spiritual mileage from the unholy mix of art and money: her work Forcing A Miracle will see ground beyond the fair combust into a field of incense. A highlight of the talks programme will be trash culture vulture, director John Waters, chewing over “stupidity”. Frieze also has a new sister exhibition with a more mature outlook: Frieze Masters, with works stretching from antiquity to the early 20th century.
Beyond Frieze’s Regent’s Park home, there’s a citywide explosion of new shows, including one-off projects in leftfield venues such as Toby Ziegler’s cubist-futurist sculptures, installed 14 floors down in the low-lit, concrete netherworld of an underground car-park (Q-Park, W1, Wed to 20 Oct).
SS
Misawa (1971), by Daido Moriyama Photograph: Daido Moriyama
The biggest dent on the commercial gallery landscape, though, is New York behemoth David Zwirner’s new Mayfair gallery (Grafton Street, W1). It opens today with one of the world’s most influential painters: pioneer of pallid washes and political subtext, Luc Tuymans (Fri 5 Oct to 17 Nov).
Big names opening elsewhere include Chris Ofili and his Matisse-esque tropics (Victoria Miro, N1, Sat 6 Oct to 10 Nov); spinner of magical feminist fables Kiki Smith (Timothy Taylor, W1, Thu 11 Oct to 17 Nov); sculpture stalwart Anish Kapoor experimenting with colour (Lisson, NW1, Wed 10 Oct to 10 Nov); and iconic Swiss duo Peter Fischli and the late David Weiss (Sprüth Magers, W1, Tue 9 Oct to 10 Nov).
SS
The Cripples, by Toby Ziegler Photograph: Todd-White
Contemporary art’s big daddy, Tate Modern (SE1, Wed 10 Oct to 20 Jan), is pairing William Klein and Daido Moriyama, with fashion, gay rights and the effects of globalisation all in the mix. The Serpentine Gallery might be smaller, but it’s got stamina. The seventh instalment of its art “marathon” (W2, Sat 13 to 14 Oct) is another non-stop weekend of performances, talks and events with leading artists, scientists and thinkers, themed around archaeology, memory and recording history.
If you’d rather end the week on a calmer note, you can cool your heels at the Sunday Art Fair (Ambika P3, W1, Thu 11 Oct to 14 Oct). With no booths or divisions between its 20 young galleries, community spirit rules in an ideal antidote to full-on Frieze.
SS
Blue Moon I (2011), by Kiki Smith Photograph: PR
