Art and watch lovers, this is your weekend in New York City, as Frieze New York comes to town –complete with a partnership with Swiss watch brand Breguet.
Waterfall VII digital video by Dawn Ng.
Breguet
In fact, this year marks the third year that Breguet partners with the New York Frieze Art Fair. A highly successful venture, Frieze Art Fair brings together the best of contemporary art and sculpture under one roof. This year, Breguet not only showcases its watches and clocks, but also works with curator Jenn Ellis for a decidedly female-focused exhibit.
Ellis, with roots in Switzerland and Colombia, has spent more than a decade bringing the worlds of art, space and meaning together in unusual forms.
She carefully curates a meeting of artists and galleries, as well as spearheading projects that bring nature and nuances together.
For the first Frieze exhibition of 2024, she turned to Singaporean artist Dawn Ng who interprets time in color using emotion and nature. This duo of strong women deftly underscores Breguet’s commitment to women, as well as to the arts.
Curator of the Breguet exhibit for Frieze New York 2024, Jenn Ellis, visits the Breguet workshops in Switzerland for inspiration. Photo: Bart Pajak
Bart Pajak, Breguet
According to Lionel a Marca, CEO of Breguet, during a private interview, “Women are extremely important to the brand, which is why we develop watches for women – we don’t turn men’s watches into ladies’ watches. For Frieze, our choice could have been a man, as was the case in the first year of our collaboration with Pablo Bronstein. For the past two seasons, however, we’ve been very sensitive to the creative vision of the women curators we’ve chosen, whose approach we appreciate.”
Before the Frieze New York exhibit, Ellis visited the Breguet manufacture in Vallee de Joux, Switzerland, to learn more about the artisans that spend their hours carefully crafting timepieces from the inside out — with focuses on engraving, angling, finishing and more. This insight helped her to curate the first exhibit of 2024 – Frieze New York.
Dawn Ng artist. Photo: Michelle Yap
Michelle Yap, Breguet
Her artist of choice: Dawn Ng, Singaporean artist who articulates time using color, emotion and nature-inspired concepts. The first exhibition, entitled “An Atlas of Us,” focuses on unusual materials combined with photography and painting. Among those unusual materials: blocks of ice, watercolors, acrylics and dyes – that all come together in ephemeral artistic depictions of the forces of nature.
“Give Me Land Lots of Land Under Starry Skies Above” — Residue painting, acrylic paint, dye, and ink on watercolour paper by Dawn Ng, 2023.
Dawn Ng, Breguet
According to Ng, she explores time through ice, and art via photography and other means. “Pervading my work is the question of what if we described time as a color, shape and form, through the lens of emotions, rather than strict numerical terms? Collaborating with Breguet, a brand that is vested in not only time but also in the notions of heritage, is interesting and prompts me to think about what predates us, in particular land, topography, and geological formations. … I am excited to unpack thoughts around what makes us ‘us’, how time can be reflected by the surfaces we stand on, but also how it comes, goes, and evolves in a cyclical manner.”
In fact, a Marca says, “Ladies watches are very essential to Breguet’s business and strategy across all of our ladies watches, be it Classique, Marine, or Reine de Naples. For me, Reine de Naples is a very integral part of Breguet because it is the only ladies’ watch that has been conceived by a woman [Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples], and mastered by a watchmaker. We have customers who come for that model particularly because it is the only one of its kind [with this legacy]….For me what is interesting about Frieze, based on what I saw in Los Angeles, London, and Seoul, is that the customers are interested in what the new generation is doing in art, but they’re also very interested when we explain to them that Breguet has always done things differently, with an artistic aesthetic, handcrafted by its artisans in its watchmaking manufacture.”
Frieze New York 2024 takes place in New York City at the Shed from today, May 1 until Sunday May 5.
