Frieze x Stone Island and the Living Uniform of Focus – (2026)

Stone Island returns to Frieze New York 2026 as the Official Partner of Frieze Focus, continuing a long-standing dialogue between material research, culture, and emerging creative voices.

This year’s Focus section, curated by Lumi Tan, brings together 11 international galleries and a new gen of artists whose practices challenge the boundaries between memory, atmosphere, utility, and imagination.

For the latest edition of the Stone Island Frieze uniform T-shirt series, artist Reika Takebayashi translates her imagined landscapes onto garments designed to move through the fair itself — transforming the notion of a uniform from something neutral and invisible into something living, personal, and in motion.

stir

Frieze New York 2026, held from May 13 to 17 at The Shed in Hudson Yards, once again asserted itself as one of the most vital platforms for contemporary art in the United States. In its 15th edition, the fair welcomed over 65 galleries from across 26 countries, blending established powerhouses with daring emerging voices. Yet it was the Focus section — supported by Stone Island — that captured the imagination of many attendees, offering a concentrated, forward-looking survey of where art is headed.

flow

Lumi Tan, returning as curator of Focus, assembled a tight selection of 11 galleries operating for 12 years or fewer. The section featured solo presentations that were experimental, risk-taking, and deeply attuned to contemporary concerns. Seven galleries made their Frieze New York debut: Campeche, Europa, Isla Flotante, Sargent’s Daughters, Soft Opening, Ulrik, and W-galería. Returning participants included Central, Champ Lacombe, Gordon Robichaux, and Public.

The artists on view included names generating significant buzz: Antoni Miralda, Bettina Grossman, Abraham Gonzalez Pacheco, Seba Calfuqueo, Bruno Cançado, Joanne Burke, Deondre Davis, Rosario Zorraquín, Ak Goto, Yeni Mao, and Reika Takebayashi herself, presented by Public Gallery. Their practices spanned intimate explorations of family and memory, ecological and glacial themes, archaeological fictions rooted in specific landscapes, and bold material experiments.

Tan’s curatorial vision emphasized geographic diversity and artistic ambition. Focus served as a launchpad for galleries navigating the challenging economics of the art world while championing under-recognized or emerging talent. Stone Island’s partnership provided critical bursaries to each participating gallery, easing booth costs and reinforcing a shared commitment to sustainability in the ecosystem of young galleries.

hudsonyardsnewyork.com

museemagazine.com

Scenes from Frieze New York 2026 at The Shed: bustling aisles and immersive installations that defined the fair’s dynamic atmosphere.

endure

Stone Island’s involvement with Frieze began in 2023 and has since expanded across London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seoul. As Official Partner of Focus globally, the brand does more than sponsor — it engages intellectually and creatively. Each year, the collection includes financial support plus a signature uniform T-shirt series that brings an artist’s work directly into the operational life of the fair.

These T-shirts are not mere merchandise. Worn by Frieze staff, they become mobile extensions of the artworks, blurring the lines between exhibition and everyday function. Previous editions have featured artists like Hasani Sahlehe, Jamal Cyrus, Nat Faulkner, and Park Kyung Ryul — each collidereflecting Stone Island’s ethos of textile innovation meeting conceptual depth.

In 2026, Reika Takebayashi’s contribution elevated the series to new poetic heights.

imagine

Reika Takebayashi, exhibiting with Public Gallery in Focus, is known for her evocative, atmospheric works that blend painting, drawing, and installation. Her imagined landscapes often feel suspended between memory and invention — soft horizons, fragmented architectures, and ethereal color fields that evoke emotional rather than literal places.

For the Stone Island T-shirts, Takebayashi translated these sensibilities onto fabric. The resulting garments featured subtle, all-over prints or focal motifs drawn from her practice. As wearers moved through The Shed’s industrial architecture, the shirts became living canvases — shifting with body movement, catching different lights, interacting with the surrounding artworks and crowds.

This mobility added a performative layer. A uniform typically signals sameness and invisibility; here, it became personal and visible, carrying the artist’s vision into conversations, coffee breaks, and late-night Frieze Week events. Takebayashi has spoken about how clothing extends her work into a different register — no longer static but responsive to environment, wear, and time.

officemagazine.net

Stone Island x Frieze by Reika Takebayashi | Office Magazine

Reika Takebayashi in her studio, with one of her characteristic large-scale figurative and landscape-infused works behind her.

know

Stone Island’s creative director and leadership have long championed the idea that clothing is a site of research and storytelling. Founded in 1982 in Italy, the brand pioneered garment dyeing, innovative fabrics, and functional design inspired by military and technical clothing. Yet it has increasingly positioned itself within cultural conversations — from music to contemporary art.

The Frieze partnership exemplifies this. By choosing artists whose work resonates with themes of material transformation, memory, and place, Stone Island creates synergies that feel organic rather than transactional. Takebayashi’s landscapes on fabric echo the brand’s own experiments with color, texture, and how garments age and adapt through use.

As one Stone Island voice reflected in the official statement: garments can carry meaning, memory, and atmosphere. In an art fair context, where thousands of bodies navigate tight spaces, these T-shirts turned staff into subtle ambassadors of Focus’s spirit — bridging the commercial and the conceptual.

forward

While Focus provided the fair’s intellectual core, the main section delivered blue-chip excitement with strong Latin American representation. Institutional tie-ins amplified the week: exhibitions at the Guggenheim, MoMA, Met, Whitney, and Dia Beacon created a city-wide dialogue.

Frieze Week events, parties, and satellite shows turned New York into a temporary global art capital. Stone Island’s presence extended beyond The Shed — with branding, posters, and the visible T-shirts creating a cohesive visual thread throughout the ecosystem.

sum

In an era where art fairs face scrutiny over environmental impact, elitism, and market pressures, partnerships like Stone Island x Frieze Focus stand out. They provide tangible support to emerging infrastructure while fostering creative cross-pollination. Artists gain view; galleries receive financial breathing room; visitors encounter art in unexpected, wearable forms.

Takebayashi’s T-shirts embodied the theme of the 2026 Focus: boundaries between memory and present, atmosphere and utility, imagination and daily life dissolved. What began as an artist’s internal landscape became something shared, mobile, and communal.

As the fair closed on May 17, the conversations sparked in Focus booths — and the subtle presence of those printed shirts — lingered. They reminded attendees that art’s most powerful moments often occur in the intersections: between disciplines, between object and body, between institution and individual.

Stone Island and Frieze have built something enduring here — not just sponsorship, but a genuine platform for the next generation. In Reika Takebayashi’s moving landscapes, we saw the future of both art and fashion: thoughtful, research-driven, emotionally resonant, and always in motion.

The dialogue continues. Next stop: Frieze seasons ahead, with more artists, more innovation, and more belief that utility and poetry can — and should — coexist.