PIA FRIES – BLAU UND RAU

Posted on 2024-09-09

Pia Fries’ works unfold in the tension between abstraction and concrete- ness. They are created through layers, transparencies, and branchings— also in relation to the combination of different techniques. In the screen printing process, the artist has placed images of logs, blocks of wood, or timbers at various points on the canvas. They differ in their shape and structure, yet in each painting, Pia Fries focuses on similar depictions: from driftwood or wood blocks with exposed, fibrous, split longitudinal sides to soft woods with coarse cross-sections (so-called tracheids) to timbers that are leaning against each other or stacked crosswise.

The underlying trunks or branches were treated differently, such as with sandblasting, sawing, or chopping. They were then photographed, exposed onto screen printing plates, and manually printed in different colors on the completely or partially white-primed canvas.

Opposite – balancelle, 2024

Exhibition runs through to October 26th, 2024

Mai 36 Galerie
Rämistrasse 37
CH-8001 Zürich
Switzerland

mai36.com

  

ALISON WILDING – TESTING THE OBJECTS OF AFFECTION

Posted on 2024-09-09

Wilding’s work is often discussed in terms of materials and shadow, concealment and revelation; the artist refers to her work as ‘mostly abstract sculptures’. Outside of abstraction, her practice is very much related to human desires and bodily encounters. As Wilding says, ‘sculpture can be sexy’. Wilding often pushes together and juxtaposes unlikely relationships between materials, including bronze, alabaster, wood, rubber, paper, copper, string and sand, illustrating a focus and continued exploration of balance, weight and line. This exhibition also gives us an insight into the scale at which Wilding works. Small arrangements of sculptures are presented on worktables from the artist’s East London studio. Works of an intimate scale, including a tiny desiccated frog found in the basement of the artist’s home, are shown in conversation with large free-standing and floor-based sculptures.

Exhibition runs through to October 26th, 2024

Alison Jacques
22 Cork Street
W1S 3LZ
London

alisonjacques.com

  

TOMÁS SARACENO – WORLDINGS

Posted on 2024-09-09

“[…] we must first blow, in fancy, a soap bubble around each creature to represent its own world, filled with the percepions, which it alone knows. When we ourselves then step into one of these bubbles, the familiar meadow is transformed. Many of its colorful features disappear, others no longer belong together but appear in new relaionships. A new world comes into being.”

Opposite – Installation View

Exhibition runs through to October 12th, 2024

Andersen’s
Rentemestervej 49
2400 Copenhagen
Danemark

www.andersenscontemporary.dk

  

GRACE WEAVER – FLOWERS

Posted on 2024-09-02

Painted in 2024 in Rangsdorf, Germany, Weaver’s latest body of sixteen large-scale canvases takes as its focal point one of the most enduring motifs of art history: the flower. Rendered in acrylic on canvas, a medium shift for the artist, the ‘Flower Paintings’ stand as both a counterpoint and continuation of Weaver’s oil paintings and watercolours of the human subject. Indeed, while impressive in size, the paintings are imbued with a profound intimacy. Upright, drooping, or entwined in a tangle of stems, the brightly coloured flowers appear highly charged, as if resonating with a full spectrum of emotion.

Opposite – Installation View

Exhibition runs through to September 28th, 2024

Galerie Max Hetzler
41 Dover Street
W1S 4NS
London

www.maxhetzler.com

  

LUKAS QUIETZSCH – DSTRYR

Posted on 2024-09-02

“To recognize is to bring back to mind. To partially recognize is to recall a detail of an absent object or its immediate surroundings; it’s the inaccessibility of the mark, and the overwhelming excess of an “inside,” “around,” “nearby.” It is a key in a lock that won’t turn. If these paintings are allegorical montages of missed marks, how come they present with the intactness of a mirror, the self-evidence of a photograph? And why do they seem to reflect, in a flash, glimpses of the recent past?
One answer might be found in the artist’s “unproductive” approach to their own work: a preoccupation with the power of association and its inherent destruction as desire moves from one object to another; with a working through rather than the conscious encoding of ideas. Here—where the can is burst open, and it’s less about stuff going in or rather on—moments of recognition rarely show up in their representational function. Instead, what gently emerges are the abstract relationships between the parts that remain absent—a kind of
familiar unseen.”

Erika Landström

Opposite – Untitled, 2024

Exhibition runs through to October 26th, 2024

Galerie Gisela Capitain
St. Apern Straße 26
50667 Cologne
Germany

www.galeriecapitain.de

  

HELEN MARDEN – THE GRIEF PAINTINGS

Posted on 2024-09-02

Begun in 2023 as Marden cared for her husband, Brice, and made over the months following his passing, the Grief Paintings are intimately scaled abstractions created with resin, powdered pigment, ink, and natural objects. Flowing layers of vivid color and assemblages of feathers, shells, and sea glass extend beyond the paintings’ circular supports. Imbued with the spirit of life, love, and creativity, this body of work takes on new meaning in accord with the poem “Growing Up in America” by Rene Ricard, a longtime friend of the couple.

Opposite – Grief XX, 2023

Exhibition runs through to September 14th, 2024

Gagosian
Park & 75, 821 Park Avenue
NY 10021
New York

gagosian.com