Swiss born and German based painter
Pia Fries layers and trowels paint atop pristine snowy white panel surfaces in
her fourth solo show at CRG Gallery. Below the thick, pulsating dollops of
paint are Fries’ visual source material that she has carefully silkscreened below
her voluminous paint. Titled ‘fahnenbild’
or ‘flag pictures’, Fries visually embeds through her silkscreen technique the 16th
century Mannerist prints of Hendrick Goltzius and the Baroque printmaker Stefano
della Bella. Mechanically reproduced versions of etched lines interact with
viscous paint marks that make Fries paintings an assemblage of the handmade and
the reproduced, the historical consciousness and the contemporary gesture. Profusely
layered, Fries’ paintings fashions a painting mark that is the equivalent to
the Baroque texture of an intaglio print. Fries exhibition is entitled ‘randmeer’,
which in Dutch translates as ‘Border Lake’, implying that Fries paintings are
an aesthetic body of water that should be navigated to and from neighboring
points of thought. Sliding to and from the Baroque to the contemporary, the
Mannerist to the handmade, Fries paintings, jumbled and pristine, limited and
sly, demonstrates their hoary affection for paint, surface and line.
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fahnenbild a, 2011-2012
Oil paint and silkscreen on wood in two parts 66 7/8 X 86 5/8 inches (each) 133 3/4 X 86 5/8 inches (overall) |
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fahnenbild b, 2012
Oil paint and silkscreen on wood 48 7/8 X 66 7/8 inches |
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fahnenbild e1, 2012
Oil paint and silkscreen on wood 27 1/2 X 19 5/8 inches |
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seewärts 2, 2011-2012
Oil paint and silkscreen on wood 43 1/4 X 33 1/8 inches |
I found this work very exciting when I saw it in the gallery! Thanks for this post.
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