Breguet Unveils Curated Art About Time, Watches At Frieze New York

Frieze New York, the contemporary art fair, takes place starting today with a by-invitation only preview for today and with the Fair running and open to the public from May 18-21 at The Shed in Hudson Yards in Manhattan. Swiss watch brand Breguet is a Global Fair Partner – a collaboration it established last year. With this role, Breguet hosts lounges at the Fair and displays commissioned artworks curated by Somi Sim. The year-long agreement with Sim features curated works that reflect the perception of time. Also on display are a host of important historical Breguet timepieces.

In addition to the watches and art, Breguet has a watchmaker and artisans present, demonstrating the making of watch movement, and the fine artistic elements that go along with it, including guilloche, engraving, and other arts.

For Frieze New York, Somi Sim, an independent curator, was inspired by the Breguet Manufacture, which she visited to get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Breguet timepieces. Sim will curate art for each of the Frieze events this year, but for the first one here in New York, she is focused on “Orbital Time.”

She has selected creations by international artists and even installed a bespoke exhibit by Rags Media Collective and Ann Lislegaard that is designed to present the art of watchmaking and the notion of time. The Rags Media Collective presents “I fall in love out of orbit” and showcases nine clocks set to local time zones of other Frieze host cities and other cities. During the day, the numbers on each clock evolve into emotions. In a small, darkened room in the Breguet lounge, a video entitled “oracles, owls … Some animals Never Sleep” that was created by artist Ann Lislegaard.

Breguet’s lounge at The Shed is on the 8^th floor and is open to the public. Following New York, Somi Sim will also curate further editions focused on time for Breguet at Frieze in London, Seoul and Los Angeles.

“What excites me about working with Frieze and Breguet is the potential to expand transdisciplinary discourses and perspectives. Reflecting on Breguet’s heritage of invention and know how [savoir-faire], I aim to explore how our perception of time is constructed, and how contemporary art can represent time occurring beyond the linear,” says Somi Sim. “I want this collaboration to show the complexity of a ‘universal’ time, allowing us to recontextualize time across geopolitical divisions, cultural differences, and other boundaries.”