Pia Fries
04 Feb - 27 Mar 2010
PIA FRIES
"Zirkumpolar"
February 4th To March 27th 2010
Pia Fries ’ painting on and with the white-washed wooden girders shows color as facticity and process. Several formations added as thick impastos appear in varying structures with their own respective nuances of color. In part blocky and separate and in part connected one after another, the cadences of her brushwork is present in flowing strokes or graceful modules, behaving, as it were, in a variety of aggregate states. The painting is characterized by an opulent, perhaps even thriftless application of oil paint in noticeable allusion to detail. Still abstract as a state, the painting can be understood as an organic or natural fragment and is comprehended as such in the metamorphosis, satiated by the visible reality. In this respect, the homogenous white background is disposition and part of the image.
Pia Fries went in even further, including photographs of details from nature and – beginning in 2003 – reproductions from the copper engravings from painter and insect researcher Maria Sibylla Merian in the base of the picture. There, the wood girder remains partially open. The 17th and 18th century watercolors that Peter the Great collected in Leningrad contain systematically concentrated portrayals of nature. Seizing on this concept, Pia Fries screen-printed pieces directly. Her painting assumes these concepts indirectly and intuitively, takes them even further and behaves fully independent of them, with a view to the relationships between the parties.
The most recent pieces first shown at Distrito 4 go a step further. In addition to the copper engravings of Maria Sibylla Merian, abstracted primarily for contour, the serigraphy also contains other motifs: grainy wood blocks, closed, box-like assemblies in layers, such as piles of sheets of paper, the open pages of a book, delicate and with their monochrome tones and extraordinarily realistic in look and feel. The motifs are not only printed on the base of the picture, but also on metal plates that are incorporated into the pictures themselves. The metal plates have edges and at times are cut and mounted crookedly on the picture, yielding a constructive moment next to the vegetative overgrowth, expressive of the pictorial parties themselves. And in the fact that the wood background is opened in straight cuts to the white paint surface, a vital correlation occurs in the levels of the picture. The interweaving is accompanied by sharp changes in perspective, giving a complex, never quite ending spatial structure of a dominant present and all but disappearing restraint, where color forges ahead and reorders the scene. The painting of Pia Fries proves to be a sustainable and sensible model for the structures and textures of our everyday reality.
Thomas Hirsch, enero de 2010.
"Zirkumpolar"
February 4th To March 27th 2010
Pia Fries ’ painting on and with the white-washed wooden girders shows color as facticity and process. Several formations added as thick impastos appear in varying structures with their own respective nuances of color. In part blocky and separate and in part connected one after another, the cadences of her brushwork is present in flowing strokes or graceful modules, behaving, as it were, in a variety of aggregate states. The painting is characterized by an opulent, perhaps even thriftless application of oil paint in noticeable allusion to detail. Still abstract as a state, the painting can be understood as an organic or natural fragment and is comprehended as such in the metamorphosis, satiated by the visible reality. In this respect, the homogenous white background is disposition and part of the image.
Pia Fries went in even further, including photographs of details from nature and – beginning in 2003 – reproductions from the copper engravings from painter and insect researcher Maria Sibylla Merian in the base of the picture. There, the wood girder remains partially open. The 17th and 18th century watercolors that Peter the Great collected in Leningrad contain systematically concentrated portrayals of nature. Seizing on this concept, Pia Fries screen-printed pieces directly. Her painting assumes these concepts indirectly and intuitively, takes them even further and behaves fully independent of them, with a view to the relationships between the parties.
The most recent pieces first shown at Distrito 4 go a step further. In addition to the copper engravings of Maria Sibylla Merian, abstracted primarily for contour, the serigraphy also contains other motifs: grainy wood blocks, closed, box-like assemblies in layers, such as piles of sheets of paper, the open pages of a book, delicate and with their monochrome tones and extraordinarily realistic in look and feel. The motifs are not only printed on the base of the picture, but also on metal plates that are incorporated into the pictures themselves. The metal plates have edges and at times are cut and mounted crookedly on the picture, yielding a constructive moment next to the vegetative overgrowth, expressive of the pictorial parties themselves. And in the fact that the wood background is opened in straight cuts to the white paint surface, a vital correlation occurs in the levels of the picture. The interweaving is accompanied by sharp changes in perspective, giving a complex, never quite ending spatial structure of a dominant present and all but disappearing restraint, where color forges ahead and reorders the scene. The painting of Pia Fries proves to be a sustainable and sensible model for the structures and textures of our everyday reality.
Thomas Hirsch, enero de 2010.