London gallery Modern Art has been awarded the 2025 Gallery Stand Prize at Frieze London for its presentation of work by Sanya Kantarovsky. The jury also gave special mentions to Toyko gallery Taka Ishii and Mumbai’s Project 88.
The prize was judged by Mohamed Almusibli (director and curator, Kunsthalle Basel), Natasha Ginwala (artistic director, Colomboscope) and independent curator Polly Staple.
The jurors commented: ‘The jury was very pleased to recognize practices shared with deliberation and sensitivity creating distinct atmospheres on each booth. With strong installation choices, you recognize the depth and quality of the individual works. We all need moments of intimacy and sensuous attention in this time of calamity and distress. The prize and special mentions highlight a London-based gallery, as well as two galleries from further afield, Tokyo and Mumbai. Each brings commitment to Frieze as a space of communality and strong representation of diverse artistic visions.’
About the Artist
Kantarovsky was born in Russia in 1982 and emigrated to the US at the age of ten. His practice spans film, sculpture, drawing, printmaking and curating, with painting at the centre of his practice. In the new stoneware works presented by Modern Art, he experiments with ash glazes, oxides, scale and form, referencing 20th-century British studio pottery and its relationship to Japanese traditions. For Kantarovsky, this experimentation has been an inquiry into relinquishing control and opening the process of making to chance. The group of vessels was made in collaboration with potters Aleah Stewart-Souris in Craryville, New York, and Irakli Khantadze in Tbilisi, Georgia, and showcase Kantarovsky’s painterly approach, with glazes incorporating copper carbonate, cobalt oxide and manganese dioxide.
Further Information
Frieze London and Frieze Masters, The Regent’s Park, 15 – 19 October 2025.
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Main image: Photography: Linda Nylind
