For the January/February issue of frieze magazine, Shiv Kotecha profiles artist Sam Lipp in anticipation of his show at Soft Opening, London. Plus, an expansive oral history on Culver City’s Mandrake Bar celebrates its 18-year legacy as a creative hub for local artists.

Profile: Sam Lipp

‘I want to be the renderer and have the models act as if they were actors in a script.’ For more than a decade, Sam Lipp has questioned what it means to picture flesh, desire and damage in paintings where the image itself becomes the body.

Oral History: I Thought California Would Be Different

A group of writers, artists, curators and art dealers reflect on the Mandrake, a DIY art bar in Culver City, California, opened by young New York artists in the early 2000s that became the watering hole – and beating heart – of the Los Angeles art scene for nearly two decades.

Also featuring  

Carol Bove speaks to poet Ariana Reines about spiritual blind spots and the esoteric histories shaping her Guggenheim ‘Fifth Avenue era’. Ian Bourland pens a thematic essay on how political upheaval in Washington, DC imperils cultural institutions, as firings, censorship and fear erode the independence of museums and archives. In ‘1,500 Words’, Stephanie Wambugu recounts the influence of Beverly Buchanan on her novel Lonely Crowds (2025).

Columns: The Shape of Shape

Christopher Alessandrini profiles visual artist Nicholas Party; Lauren O’Neill-Butler examines how Ulrike Müller’s animated forms merge feminist critique and abstraction across mediums; Magali Reus speaks to senior editor Marko Gluhaich about translating fishing into sculpture, using silhouettes and aquatic metaphors to examine perception; Claudia Ross offers an essay on Pitupong Chaowakul’s architecture marking his participation in the Thailand Biennale; Jenny Harris interviews painter Amy Sillman, revisiting her exhibition ‘The Shape of Shape’ (2019–20) at MoMA, New York.

Finally, Edna Bonhomme responds to Widline Cadet’s photograph Manyen distans (Touching Distance, 2023). Plus, Magali Reus contributes to our series of artists’ ‘to-do’ lists, and senior editor Marko Gluhaich pens a postcard from Paris.