PIA FRIES

Pia Fries

farnese

18 February - 27 March
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Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, Pia Fries: farnese, 18 February - 27 March 2021
"Fries’s paintings invite close, deliberate examination. Her use of paint and printed images is not simply the juxtaposition of one medium with another, a strategy that has become all too conventional. Rather, through her marvelously varied means of applying color, coupled with unpredictable layers of imagery and the viscous materiality of her medium, Fries arrives at a complex visual unity."

- John Yau, "Pia Fries's Encounter With History"

parapylon 5, 2019

Oil and silkscreen on wood

94 1/2 x 59 1/8 inches
240 x 150.2 cm
- Pia Fries
  farnese kE, 2020
  Oil and silkscreen on wood
  
  27 5/8 x 18 7/8 inches
  70.2 x 47.9 cm
- Pia Fries
  farnese kF, 2020
  Oil and silkscreen on wood
  
  27 5/8 x 18 7/8 inches
  70.2 x 47.9 cm
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farnese kB, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 27 5/8 x 18 7/8 inches 70.2 x 47.9 cm (detail)
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"The paintings are structured alike to architecture, I would say, and the white field in between is a prop, or serves a supporting function. It is a link between one element and an element of support... It also constitutes a moment to rest, to contemplate, to involve the recipient, and to reflect his or her thoughts."

- Pia Fries
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- Pia Fries
  parapylon 12, 2019
  Oil and silkscreen on wood
  
  94 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches
  240 x 100.3 cm
- Pia Fries
  parapylon 12A, 2019
  Oil and silkscreen on wood
  94 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches
  240 x 100.3 cm
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"Fries's attention to figure-ground relationships, the visual embodiments of presence and absence, is simultaneously aesthetic and political—something she shares with Ad Reinhardt, David Smith, and Martin Puryear. This merging of art and social awareness establishes Fries as one of the most challenging and interesting artists of her generation."

- John Yau, "Pia Fries's Encounter With History"

parapylon 10, 2019

Oil and silkscreen on wood

94 3/4 x 59 3/8 inches

240.7 x 150.8 cm
tripylon, 2020

Oil and silkscreen on wood, in three parts

78 3/4 x 165 7/8 inches

200 x 421.3 cm
"When Fries uses a pre-existing or ready-made image, she does not appropriate it so much as analyze it. This is one of the crucial ways in which her engagement with art history stands apart from that of her contemporaries. She uses silk-screen, but not to preserve and transfer an image from one place to another. Rather, she wields the silkscreened image as a compositional tool in concert with a wide range of paint marks, from thin layers of semitransparent color to wide, thick swaths of grooved, multicolored brushstrokes. Carefully breaking down the image into distinct parts, she arranges and layers specic applications of paint into choreographed interactions."

- John Yau, "Pia Fries's Encounter With History"

disloziert 9, 2018

Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper

29 7/8 x 22 inches

75.9 x 55.9 cm
- Pia Fries
  disloziert 29, 2018
  Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper
  
  30 x 22 1/4 inches
  76.2 x 56.5 cm
- Pia Fries
  disloziert 5, 2018
  Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper
  29 7/8 x 22 3/8 inches
  75.9 x 56.8 cm
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PIA FRIES (b. 1955, Beromünster, Switzerland) completed her studies in studio art from 1977 to 1980 at the Lucerne University of Applied Science and Arts. From 1980 to 1986 she studied painting under Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Recent solo exhibitions include “Pia Fries: picklock manual,” Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, TX; “FABELFAKT,” Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Germany; “corpus transludi,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zürich, Switzerland; “parsen und module,” Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France; Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, and “Pia Fries: vier winde,” Gerhard Altenbourg Award, Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg, Germany.

Group exhibitions include “Diversity United. Contemporary European Art. Moscow. Berlin. Paris," New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, traveled to Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin, Germany and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, and Mai Galerie, Zürich, Switzerland.

Her work is included in numerous public and private collections including Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI; FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany and Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.

She is the recipient of many awards, including the Gerhard Altenbourg Award, Lindenau Museum, Altenburg, Germany; Art and Culture Award of the city of Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland; Iserlohn Art Scholarship, Villa Wessel Iserlohn, Germany, and Fred-Thieler Award, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany.

Fries lives and works in Düsseldorf and Munich.

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PIA FRIES: farnese

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