For Frieze London 2025, Galerie Noah Klink presented a solo show by Eliza Wagener. Her small- and large-scale paintings begin with a thick layer of gesso on canvas, over which she introduces figures using ink, layered with diluted oil paint to create varying levels of transparency. Her encounters with human gestures—whether in public or private spaces, or in historical paintings that serve as references—form the foundation for the interactions between the figures on her canvases. These initial encounters then evolve intuitively, shaped by chance and the materiality of the painting process, fostering an almost unsettling atmosphere filled with uncertainty surrounding the identities of the depicted bodies.
There is a tension between the personalisation of the figures and their interpretation as universally valid, non-individualised gestures. The translucent bodies interact with one another as they linger on the canvas, raising questions about the temporality—or timelessness—of her compositions. Wagener’s paintings play with the original sense of the term abstraction, derived from the Latin verb abstrahere, meaning ‘to draw away’. The artist extracts gestures from the world around her and relocates them, engaging with grids, drips, and other painterly tools.
The presentation featured four new large-scale paintings on the booth’s walls accompanied by two smaller works, paired with replicas of street lamps Wagener observes daily, creating an interaction with her figures, inspired by fleeting moments glimpsed through windows while navigating the streets of a foreign city—a theme reflecting Wagener’s own experience relocating from Hamburg to Glasgow for her studies.
