Pia Fries

PIA FRIES farnese PIA FRIES

MILES McENERY GALLERY

PIA FRIES farnese

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

511 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

PIA FRIES’S ENCOUNTER WITH HISTORY

By John Yau For more than a decade, Pia Fries has been deeply engaged with the engravings of the innovative Dutch printmaker and draftsman Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617).

Celebrated for his mastery of the “swelling line,” Goltzius manipulated the burin to make rhythmic incisions that thickened and thinned as they moved across the surface of the metal plate. Through this pioneering method, he was able to attain unrivaled tonal effects in his depictions of the musculature of an arm, the contorted limbs of a body falling through space, or a banner swelling in the wind—sensual textures and bared forms that Goltzius’s lively yet meticulous lines captured with absolute precision.

Fries began her interactions with specific works by Goltzius in 2009–10, when she transformed his engraving The Great Standard Bearer (1587) into paint.

Goltzius’s print, which depicts a young man holding aloft an enormous cloth banner as he steps forward with his hand proudly on his hip, can be viewed through today’s eyes less as a symbol of victory than as a portrait of a preening male ego.

The Austrian art historian and curator Valentina Vlašić writes that while Fries “recognized [Goltzius’s] absolutely spectacular handling of this banner, whose textures and volumes he executed in a particularly realistic way in his masterful engraving technique,”1 she was put off by the man holding it: The human figure, which in her eyes is the personification of the proud, male individual who “forges ahead” and “leads” was unnecessary for her work as a woman painter and not incorporated into any of her works.2 1. Valentina Vlašić, “Proteus and Polymorphia: Pia Fries and Hendrick Goltzius,” Pia Fries: FABELFAKT (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2019), p. 163. Exhibition catalogue, published for Fries’s exhibition at Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (March 28–June 16, 2019).

2. Ibid, p. 163.

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I would characterize Fries’s response to Goltzius as a pursuit: She is after something that she never comes out and names. I think this is because she has more than one goal in mind, and the prints provide a springboard for a series of interconnected explorations. In the different bodies of work based on a Goltzius print, Fries often begins with small works on paper before switching to large wood panels. I see this progression as Fries’s way of contemplating the image she has chosen and her way of understanding the different meanings it can be made to yield.

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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 silkscreen, 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 specific applications of paint into choreographed interactions. As Vlašić makes clear, Fries’s elisions are as important as her inclusions.

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. The distinct interactions and entanglements of her riveting compositions serve to heighten our attention to similarities and differences, continuities and shifts.

I want to take Fries’s pursuit of entanglements a step further. When Andy Warhol used silkscreen to transfer a photographic image to canvas, he would often layer it with mis-registered colors. The painting’s surface would be taken for granted.

Fries takes a different approach. Her 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. Her dissections of Goltzius’s prints consciously contradict the long-held assumption that painting is a masculine enterprise, a falsehood that traces its roots to the Renaissance, and that continues to haunt art.

Fries’s exploration of The Great Standard Bearer resulted in two series of paintings and works on paper, fahnenbilder and fahnenpapiere, dated from 2010 to 2014.

In 2015, she turned her attention to Goltzius’s four engravings collectively titled The Four Disgracers (1588), based on paintings by Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem (1562–1638). In these works, Goltzius addressed the subject of transgression in the stories of four mythical figures, all of whom were male: Icarus, Phaeton, Tantalus, and Ixion.

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Using the tondo as a compositional device, Goltzius shows each of the four men falling through space. The theme of a male figure falling—because of narcissism or hubris—builds upon Fries’s earlier interest in the figure in motion, as seen in the foppish swordsman of The Great Standard Bearer, while implying the undoing of the historical bond between masculinity and ambitious, exuberant painting.

In 2017, Fries began to explore Goltzius’s best-known engraving, The Farnese Hercules (1592). In the print, Goltzius depicts the monumental sculpture of the naked Hercules from behind. Leaning on his enormous club, whose tapered handle (topped by a lion’s skin) is nestled inside his left armpit, Hercules clutches in his right hand, which he has slipped behind his back, the three apples he stole from the garden of Hesperides.

Goltzius based his print on a statue he saw in Rome: We see the name “Hercules Victor” chiseled into the base of its stone pedestal, which feels ironic given Hercules’s bowed head and slumped shoulders. As she did with The Four Disgracers, Fries has chosen a Goltzius print whose subject is masculinity in triumph as well as

Hendrick Goltzius, Farnese Hercules, ca 1592, dated 1617

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failure. Of all the gods and demigods of classical mythology, Hercules is the paradigm of potency and machismo, the uncanny, heroic figure who goes it alone and vanquishes his enemies; yet he is ultimately undone by his adulterous love for a younger woman.

I do not think it farfetched to suggest that one of Hercules’s many modern counterparts is the popular image of Jackson Pollock alone in his studio, single-handedly achieving his breakthrough into pure abstraction and the celebration of paint’s materiality—a myth that ignores the influence and support of his wife and long “unacknowledged equal,” Lee Krasner.3 In parapylon and pylon, the two series of paintings included in this exhibition, Fries chooses to focus on Hercules’s club and elide the demigod himself from her responses, just as she avoided the male figure of The Great Standard Bearer.

And yet, even in Hercules’s absence, we sense his presence in different ways.

This might take the form of a sharply edged negative space painted with a coat of white paint, which interrupts the silkscreened forms, or the placement of one kind of mark or buttery slab of paint against another. When she uses white, she challenges us to notice the differences in the paint’s tone and texture.

3. Carter Ratcliff, Lee Krasner: The Unacknowledged Equal (Pollock-Krasner Foundation, 2020), with foreword by John Yau.

The absence of Hercules is telling, especially since Fries cuts his club into small sections, which she arranges and silkscreens onto her pristine white wooden surfaces. It takes an immense amount of confidence to leave so much of the painting open and untouched; it takes even more confidence to use white paint on a white field. The interaction of figure (paint and form) and ground (unpainted surface) is an intricate and entrancing dance.

Unrivaled in her painterly exuberance, Fries’s choice of Goltzius serves a purpose beyond mere displays of mastery. He, too, was an artist brimming with confidence, a master in his own time. How do you challenge yourself once you have achieved complete control of your materials? Goltzius answered that dare through his choice of viewpoints, such as the extreme foreshortening in Icarus, and the exacting attention he paid to the surface of a billowing banner or the fissures marking Hercules’s club.

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An abstract artist has a different set of challenges, particularly in the wake of Pollock’s use of paint solely as paint. By engaging with Goltzius’s prints, whose dense linear surfaces she treats as buoyant abstract forms, Fries counteracts her energetic enthusiasm without denying it. The dialogue she engenders delves into the art, materiality, and history of painting while subverting its dominant myth of masculinity.

The overthrow of the male paradigm of the quintessential abstract painter may be an important current running through her work, but Fries is never one to crow about such things. She knows that winning an encounter with history or undermining a dominant trope does not mean the struggle is over.

John Yau is a poet and critic whose monographs on contemporary art include Philip Taaffe (2018), Thomas Nozkowski (2017), and Catherine Murphy (2016). He has recently completed a monograph on Liu Xiaodong.

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Plate List Works on Paper page 9 disloziert 29, 2018 Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches 76 x 56.5 cm page 10 disloziert 5, 2018 Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper 29 7/8 x 22 3/8 inches 75.9 x 56.8 cm

page 14 disloziert 12, 2018 Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches 76 x 56.5 cm page 15 disloziert 9, 2018 Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper 29 7/8 x 22 inches 75.9 x 55.9 cm

54 page 11 disloziert 23, 2018 Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper 29 7/8 x 22 1/4 inches 75.9 x 56.5 cm page 12 disloziert 11, 2018 Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper 29 7/8 x 22 5/8 inches 75.9 x 57.5 cm page 13 disloziert 10, 2018 Acrylic and silkscreen on handmade paper 29 7/8 x 22 3/8 inches 75.9 x 56.8 cm

Paintings page 19 parapylon 5, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 94 1/2 x 59 1/8 inches 240 x 150.2 cm page 20 farnese kB, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 27 5/8 x 18 7/8 inches 70.2 x 47.9 cm page 21 farnese kG, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 27 5/8 x 18 7/8 inches 70.2 x 47.9 cm

page 22 farnese kC, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 27 5/8 x 18 7/8 inches 70.2 x 47.9 cm page 23 farnese kD, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 27 5/8 x 19 1/8 inches 70.2 x 48.6 cm page 24 farnese kE, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 27 5/8 x 18 7/8 inches 70.2 x 47.9 cm page 25 farnese kF, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 27 5/8 x 18 7/8 inches 70.2 x 47.9 cm page 26 pylon kK, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches 80 x 60 cm page 27 pylon kC, 2018 Oil and silkscreen on wood 31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches 80 x 60 cm

page 28 pylon kH, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches 80 x 60 cm

page 35 pylon TI, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 57 x 39 1/2 inches 144.8 x 100.3 cm

page 45 parapylon 6, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 94 1/2 x 59 inches 240 x 150 cm

page 29 pylon kN, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches 80 x 60 cm

page 37 pylon LU, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 67 x 47 1/2 inches 170.2 x 120.7 cm

page 47 parapylon 9, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 94 1/2 x 59 inches 240 x 150 cm

page 30 pylon kQ, 2018 Oil and silkscreen on wood 39 3/8 x 25 5/8 inches 100 x 65 cm

page 39 pylon AR, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 67 x 47 1/4 inches 170.2 x 120 cm

page 31 pylon kR, 2018 Oil and silkscreen on wood 39 3/8 x 25 5/8 inches 100 x 65 cm

page 40 parapylon 12, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 94 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches 240 x 100.3 cm

pages 48–50 tripylon, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood left: 78 3/4 x 55 1/4 inches 200 x 140.4 cm middle: 78 3/4 x 55 1/4 inches 200 x 140.4 cm right: 78 3/4 x 55 1/4 inches 200 x 140.4 cm

page 33 pylon VS, 2020 Oil and silkscreen on wood 57 1/8 x 39 1/2 inches 145.1 x 100.3 cm

page 41 parapylon 12A, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 94 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches 240 x 100.3 cm page 43 parapylon 1, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 94 1/2 x 59 inches 240 x 150 cm

page 53 parapylon 10, 2019 Oil and silkscreen on wood 94 1/2 x 59 3/8 inches 240.7 x 150.8 cm

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PIA FRIES Born in Beromünster, Switzerland in 1955 Lives and works in Düsseldorf and Munich, Germany

EDUCATION 1986 Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany Studied painting under Gerhard Richter 1980 Lucerne University of Applied Science and Arts, Lucerne, Switzerland

2016 “seascapes,” Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “oxiponton,” Galerie Thomas, Munich, Germany “weisswirt und maserzug,” Kopfermann-Fuhrmann Stiftung, Düsseldorf, Germany 2015 “volume & light,” Neiman Molenaar & Mai 36 Galerie, Hong Kong, China “tabula coloribus,” Kunstparterre, Munich, Germany “windhand laufbein,” Kunstplattform AKKU, Emmenbrücke, Lucerne, Switzerland “fernleib manual,” Galerie Mai 36, Zurich, Switzerland 2014 “paysages maritimes,” Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2021 “farnese,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2020 “picklock manual,” Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, TX 2019 “FABELFAKT,” Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany 2018 “corpus transludi,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland “parsen und module,” Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH 2017 “vier winde,” Gerhard Altenbourg Award, LindenauMuseum, Altenburg, Germany “Hendrick Goltzius and Pia Fries: proteus and polymorphia,” Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany “nasen und nauen,” Galerie Ute Parduhn, Düsseldorf, Germany Moss Arts Center, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA

2013 “Malerei,” Neue Galerie, Gladbeck, Germany “wetter fahnen fächer,” Galerie Nelson-Freeman, Paris, France 2012 “farbtaten,” Studio Michael Royen Vettelschoß, Cologne, Germany “randmeer,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY 2011 Iserlohn Art Prize, Villa Wessel, Iserlohn, Germany 2010 “krapprhizom luisenkupfer,” Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany “zirkumpolar,” Galería Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid, Spain 2009 Fred Thieler Prize, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany “spanraum,” Art Forum Baloise, Basel, Switzerland “merian’s surinam,” Galerie Nelson-Freeman, Paris, France 2008 “gutzgauch élévateur,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland “la partie élévatrice,” Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, Portugal

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2007 “loschaug,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY “Painting 1990–2007,” Kunst Museum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland “Painting 1990–2007,” Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany “painted tongues,” Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, United Kingdom 2006 “schwarzwild,” Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, United Kingdom “plumbago,” Galería Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid, Spain 2005 “lukilux,” Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “hollerith,” Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, Portugal “black flowers – monotypes,” Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA “dover publications,” Galerie Nelson-Freeman, Paris, France

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2004 “ornithology,” Galería Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid, Spain “murgang,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY 2003 “les aquarelles de léningrad,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 2002 Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium Galerie Nelson, Paris, France “New Paintings,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY “schiwege,” Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2001 Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst, Otterndorf, Germany “Works on Paper,” Herder Raum Für Kunst, Cologne, Germany The Box, Turin, Italy 2000 Overbeck-Gesellschaft, Lübeck, Germany Galerie Rolf Ricke, Cologne, Germany

1999 “Peinture,” Galerie Nelson, Paris, France “New Work,” Galerie Tanya Rumpff, Haarlem, Amsterdam, The Netherlands “parsen und module,” Kunsthalle Göppingen, Göppingen, Germany Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 1998 Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany “Painting,” Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany 1997 “Kunstpreis Münsterland,” Alter Hof Herding, Coesfeld, Germany Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany “Painting,” Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm, Germany 1996 Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 1995 Galerie Benzeholz, Meggen, Switzerland 1994 Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 1993 Galerie Ludwig, Krefeld, Germany 1992 Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Germany Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany 1988 Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, Germany

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2021 “Diversity United. Contemporary European Art. Moscow.

Berlin. Paris.” New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, traveled to Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany and Paris, France “.CH,” Mai Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 2020 “small is beautiful: (A)rtschwager to (Z)augg,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 2019 “Focus on Color,” Braun-Falco Galerie, Munich, Germany “Pia Fries & Liat Yossifor,” Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany “Flying Letters,” Clay Street Press, Cincinnati, OH “Flugblätter Schloss Plüschow,” Mecklenburgisches Künstlerhaus Schloss Plüschow, Upahl, Germany “Schau, ich bin blind, schau,” Hans and Monika Furer Collection, Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland “Frozen Gesture: Gesture in Painting – From Roy Lichtenstein to Katharina Grosse,” Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Germany “Flugblätter” (curated by Birgit Jensen), Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, United Kingdom 2018 “MAGMA #2,” Shedhalle, Zug, Switzerland “Flugblätter” (co-curated by Birgit Jensen and Kenzo Onoda), Maebashi Renga-gura, Maebashi, Japan “QUASIDACAPO: Pia Fries, Hans Brändli,” Galleria Arte-Ria, Locarno, Switzerland “Flugblätter” (curated by Birgit Jensen), Pictura Dordrecht, Dordrecht, Netherlands “Collection of Contemporary Art,” Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland 2017 “Landscape in Art After 1946,” Hurrle Collection, Museum für Aktuelle Kunst, Durbach, Germany “Flugblätter” (curated by Birgit Jensen), Künstler Gut Loitz e.

V., Loitz an der Peene, Germany

“Sammlung Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung,” Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany “Artist Portraits in Düsseldorf: 1800 until now,” Akademie Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany “Think-Paint,” Unix Gallery, New York, NY “Swiss Art from F. Hodler and G. Giacometti until now,” Kunstausstellung Trubschachen, Trubschachen, Switzerland 2016 “Drama Queens, The Collection on Stage,” Morsbroich Museum, Leverkusen, Germany “The Invention of Abstraction,” Akademie Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany “Outward Depth,” Galerie der Künstler, Munich, Germany “I’ll Not Be In Your Damn Ledger: Steven Bindernagel, Tomory Dodge, Pia Fries, Sam Reveles, Steve Roden,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY “Ortwechsel: Works from the Kunstmuseum Bonn,” Schauwerk Sindelfingen, Sindelfingen, Germany 2015 “CH-Variations-Newer Swiss Drawings,” Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Germany “20 Years of Graphics,” Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Wilhelmshaven, Germany “I can do it otherwise,” Museum Gegenstandsfreier Kunst, Otterndorf, Germany 2014 “paperfile,” galerie oqbo, Berlin, Germany “Freshly Painted,” Bruder-Klaus Museum, Sachseln, Switzerland 2013 “My Kind of Disneyland,” Märkisches Museum, Witten, Germany “Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press,” National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Das doppelte Bild,” Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Solothurn, Switzerland 2012 Salon der Gegenwart, Hamburg, Germany “schöntrauer,” Galerie E105, Berlin, Germany “New Paintings from the Collection,” Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Germany

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“It’s Only Painting But I Like It: Jo Dickreiter, Tatjana Doll, Pia Fries, Steffen Lenk, Fabian Marcaccio, David Reed, Richard Allen Morris, Gert und Uwe Tobias, Stéfane Zaech,” Kunstverein Offenburg-Mittelbaden, Offenburg, Germany “La Ligne Passée,” Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Luxembourg 2011 “Risk + Reward,” Ruth Foster Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI “The Language of the Flowers,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY 2010 “Ambigu: Contemporary Painting Between Abstraction and Narration,” Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland “Do Not Look Now: The Collection of Contemporary Art Part 1,” Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland “Christian Marclay, Pia Fries and Wilhelm Mundt: FUSION,” Goya Contemporary, Baltimore, MD “Inaugural Show,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY

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2009 “Drawing of the World, World of Drawing,” Museum of Art, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea “An Audio Tour through Berlin by Karin Sander” (soundtrack

by Hans Brändli), Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, Berlin, Germany “Christoph Bucher vs Pia Fries,” Galerie Kamchatka, Paris, France “Irreversible: Double Meaning of the Sanchez Ubirìa’s Collection,” Pazo da Cultura de Pontevedra, Pontevedra, Spain 2008 “Lust: The Presence of Absence,” Columbus Art Foundation, Leipzig, Germany “Plasticismes: Pràctiques abstractes avui,” Centre de Cultura Sa Nostra, Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain “(desperately) trying to figure out the world, Part I,“ Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland

2007 “25th Anniversary,” Galerie Nelson, Paris, France Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, United Kingdom “Rolf Ricke Collection: a Contemporary Document,” Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland (traveled to Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein and Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) “Top of Central Switzerland: Contemporary Art from Central Switzerland,” Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland “Certainly Art: The Art Collection of the Provincial Insurance,” Museum Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany 2006 “German Works on paper from the Collection since 1960,” Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Germany “Daylight: Provincial Engagement in the Rhineland for Contemporary Art,” Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany “Helga de Alvear: Concepts for a Collection,” Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal “Clear Cuts - The Michael Stankiewicz Collection,” Schloss Raabs, Raabs an der Thaya, Austria “100 Artists – 100 Watercolors,” Jeannie Freilich Fine Art, New York, NY “VIP III: Arena of Abstraction,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany 2005 “Group Exhibition” (curated by Karin Sander and soundtrack

by Hans Brändli), Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid, Spain “Landscape Confection,” Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA “Sweet Temptations: Rolf Ricke Collection,” Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland “Looks and concepts in the Helga de Alvear collection,” Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo, Badajoz, Spain “Painting’s Edge,” Idyllwild Arts Parks Exhibition Center, Idyllwild, CA “Extreme Abstraction,” Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY “Balance in Two Acts,” Collection Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung, Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover, Germany

“Looping,” FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France “Step into Liquid,” Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA Galería Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid, Spain 2004 “25th Anniversary: The LA Years,” Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “V.I.P. 2: Die Neuen,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany “Arte sobre papel,” Galería Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid, Spain “Angela de la Cruz, Paul Doran, Pia Fries, Dennis Hollingsworth, Jürgen Meyer, Adrian Schiess,” Galerie Tanya Rumpff, Haarlem, Amsterdam, The Netherlands “Le Syndrome de Babylone: Collection Du FRAC D’Auvergne,” Centre D’Art Contemporain de la Villa du Parc, Annemasse, France

2001 “L.A. International,” Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Delicious,” Roger Smith Gallery, New York, NY Galerie Rolf Ricke, Cologne, Germany Fourth International Biennial, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM “Julius Bär Art im Helmhaus zu Gast,” Helmhaus, Zurich, Switzerland “A Century of Challenges: 20th Century art in the Collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Aarau,” Musée Rath, Geneva, Switzerland

2003 “La Langue dans la Boue,” Musée du Tapis et des Arts Textiles, Clermont-Ferrand, France “New Abstract Painting – Painting Abstract Now,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany “Torn Between Two Lovers,” Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, NY “Malerei,” Galerie Katharina Krohn, Basel, Switzerland “Perpetual Motion Machine: 40 Years of Gallery Rudolf Ricke,” Galerie Rolf Ricke, Cologne, Germany “Fresh: Works on Paper,” James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM Galerie Klinkhammer und Metzner, Düsseldorf, Germany

2000 “Surface and Paint,” CRG Gallery, New York, NY “Paintings,” Galerie Maximilian Krips, Cologne, Germany “Flower Power,” Klinik Im Schachen, Aarau, Switzerland “From Edgar Degas to Gerhard Richter: Works on Paper from the Collection of the Kunstmuseums Winterthur,” Kunstmuseums Winterthur, Winterthur, Germany Kinský Palace, National Gallery Prague, Vienna, Austria Museum der Moderne Salzburg Rupertinum, Salzburg, Austria Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History, Münster, Germany Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany “The Memory of Painting,” Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland “2356 KM art from Düsseldorf in Moscow,” New Manege, Moscow, Russia “Painting Today – Overseas and Here,” Galerie Renate Schröder, Cologne, Germany Convent of the Capuchins, Caraglio, Italy

2002 “Super-Abstr-Action 2,” Galleria No Code, Bologna, Italy “Sculpture Painting Photography,” Schönewald and Beuse Gallery, Xanten, Germany “Simply Art: Rolf Ricke Collection,” Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany “Sight Mapping,” Konsthalle Bohuslans Museum, Uddevalla, Sweden (traveled to Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland and Sala Rekalde, Bilbao, Spain)

1999 Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel, Germany “dAPERTutto” (curated by Harald Szeemann), La Biennale di Venezia: 48th International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Venice, Italy “’99 or ’59: Respect for 40 Years of Art in Switzerland,” Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland “Super-Abstr-Action,” The Box Associati, Turin, Italy Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris, France

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1998 “Abstract: Paintings by Pia Fries, René J. Goffin, Birgit Jensen,” Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Kiel, Germany “Farbe 1,” Galerie Monika Reitz, Frankfurt, Germany 1997 “Pia Fries, Birgit Jensen,” Kunstverein Arnsberg, Arnsberg, Germany “BildRäume,” Landeskulturzentraum Salzau, Salzau, Germany “Position Abstract/Concrete,” Schönewald and Beuse Gallery, Krefeld, Germany “Pia Fries, Olav Christopher Jenssen, Perry Roberts,” Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland

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1996 “Near & Far: 19 Positions: Artists from Germany,” Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria “Last Infusion: 50 Artists from Düsseldorf,” Former Wave Pool at Grünstraße, Düsseldorf, Germany “A Transformation of Hell - 90’s German art from North Rhine-Westphalia,” Kulturhuset, Stockolm, Sweden “Our Time,” Schönewald and Beuse Gallery, Krefeld, Germany “3 Positions on Painting: Pia Fries, Gerhard Martini, Paul Moran”, Galerie Cöra Holzl, Düsseldorf, Germany “Untitled: The Collection of Contemporary Swiss Art by the Art Today Foundation,” Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland “Drawing: Central Switzerland,” Tal Museum Engelberg, Engelberg, Switzerland 1994 “In Miniature: Painting and Sculpture,” Schönewald and Beuse Gallery, Krefeld, Germany “Visiting,” Atroper Straße 26, Duisburg, Germany “From the Art Collection of the City of Lucerne,” Lucerne Town Hall, Lucerne, Switzerland 1993 “Hans Brändli, Pia Fries, Karin Kneffel,” Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich, Germany Federal Art Scholarship, St. Gallen Museum of Art, St. Gallen, Switzerland Ernemann-Neubau, Dresden, Germany

“Tory Brauntuch, Pia Fries, Thomas Ruff, Adrian Schiess,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland “Eine Adresse,” Stephanien Straße 16, Düsseldorf, Germany 1992 Federal Art Scholarship, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Solothurn, Switzerland “The Carpet of Life: Katharina Fritsch, Pia Fries, Hans Brändli, Michael van Ofen,” Municipal Museum, Kleve, Germany “1987-1992: The 29th Exhibition,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 1991 “Luzern Transit? Andreas Bissig, Max Bühlmann, Pia Fries, Jörg Niderberger, Franz Wanner,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland 1990 “Swiss Scene,” Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, Germany 1989 “Presentation of the Juried Works: Fine Art Competition,” Cultural Panorama at Löwenplatz, Lucerne, Switzerland 1988 “Helmut Dorner, Pia Fries, Axel Kasseböhmer, Jürgen Meyer,” Galerie Nelson, Lyon, France 1986 Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany 1985 “Pour parer les coups,” Galerie Instant, Kriens, Switzerland

AWARDS

SELECT COLLECTIONS

2017 Gerhard Altenburg Award, Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg, Germany

Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland

2014 Art and Culture Award of the City of Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI

2011 Iserlohn Art Scholarship, Villa Wessel, Iserlohn, Germany

Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France

Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland 2009 Fred-Thieler Award, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany

Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland

2000 Studio Residency Award, Cultural Foundation Landis & Gyr Zug, London, United Kingdom

Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany

1996 Art Prize Münsterland, Münster, Germany

Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland

Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland 1994 Bonn Art Foundation, Bonn, Germany 1992 Nordmann Prize, Canton of Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN

1991 Swiss Government Art Scholarship 1989 Fine Art Grant, Canton of Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany

1986 Graduate Scholarship, State of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany

Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA

1985 Jury Prize of the Six Central Swiss Cantons, Switzerland

Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany University Hospital of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition

PIA FRIES farnese

18 February – 27 March 2021 Miles McEnery Gallery 525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2021 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2020 John Yau Director of Publications Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY Elisabeth Bernstein, New York, NY Hans Brändli, Düsseldorf, Germany Color separations by Echelon, Santa Monica, CA Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY Anke Berßelis, Düsseldorf, Germany ISBN: 978-1-949327-41-0 Cover: pylon TI (detail), 2020

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