ZIPORA FRIED
May 8 – June 12, 2021
As both a color and an emotive experience, gradients of blue have featured prominently across Fried’s body of work. The dense richness of pigment, built up line by line, creates a luminous expanse both intimate and all-encompassing in its scale and depth. The spectrum of color offers both a visual and temporal experience – gleaming sapphire slowly fades to meet a swath of twilight black, as if we are witnessing the sky’s transformation from day to night. Fields of lush shades of green take the form of landscapes, or light passing over land and sea.
Rendered in colored pencil, each mark is distinct and singular, yet subsumed within the larger composition. The ability to at once trace each individual stroke, as well as its place within the complete field of color, brings a sense of continuous movement and vibrancy.
Areas of darkness and light conceal and illuminate one another, in a constant making and unmaking of space and form. The drawings are complete, prismatic environments resonating with energy and life.
Zipora Fried (b. Haifa, Israel) studied at the Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna. Recent exhibitions include Late October at On Stellar Rays, New York (2016); Zipora Fried at Marfa Contemporary, Marfa, TX (2015); and Good Night, Mister Procustes at Galerie Steinek, Vienna (2014). Her work is included in the public collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; and the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA. She currently lives and works in New York.
Lost and Found Souls, 2021 Colored pencil on archival museum board
65 x 54 inches (165.1 x 137.2 cm)
A Terrible and Beautiful Thing, 2021 Colored pencil on archival museum board 65 x 54 inches (165.1 x 137.2 cm)
There is No Lie in This #3, 2020
Colored pencil on archival museum board
80 x 108 inches (203.2 x 274.3 cm)
Thoughts on a line: Zipora Fried
A line can be at once simple and complex: a familiar way to chart progress—a continuum of time, a tally, a benchmark, a graph—or a fundamental component of an entirely new form. A line can become a gesture, a shape, a landscape. The part represents the whole, but the whole can be something entirely different, or a summation of its component parts. Reducing forms to their individual lines reveals an inherent complexity—the potential of elemental parts to grow, generate, and expand. Through her continuous articulation of the line, Zipora Fried presents an ecological energy between surface and hand. Her pigments build, cascade, and fade through the simple adjustment of the intensity of her gesture. It is a process of endurance. Nothing is lost in this process, and nothing is hidden. The heavier the line, the more energy that is expended and transferred from the artist to the surface. This flow of energy is a constant negotiation; in short, it represents the simultaneous making and unmaking of the artwork and its creator.
Fried’s recent body of work is comprised of monumental compositions punctuated by rich, radiant shades of blue. Works such as A Terrible and Beautiful Thing and Lost and Found Souls (both 2021), call to mind the “blue savannahs of memory” described by Édouard Glissant—a massive expanse of water, the depths of the abyss, or an oceanic barrier between time and space. The heavy greens that intersect with rippling blacks conjure the fluid passage between land and sea, or the relationship between water and root. In a series of pieces entitled There Is No Lie in This (2020), dark neutrals blend harmoniously, while brighter hues seem to vibrate off the surface. There is a tension between the pigments as they come into contact with one another that suggests a lack of harmony, perhaps the scars of a disrupted landscape, a chemical imbalance, interpersonal angst, or divergent sounds reverberating through a singular space. In this struggle to adhere to the same conterminous plane, the deep, undulating blues reconnect these disparate forms, grounding the cacophonous rhythms of color into a coherent body. In this progression, we bear witness to an ecological flow, a process of give and take, loss and gain between constituent parts. A line, like any medium, is a constituent. Through order and disorder, making and unmaking, Fried’s lines build and grow into something else, something complex, something new. Together, they comprise their own environment—a ruptured ecosystem slowly coming to terms with itself.
– Re’al Christian
There is No Lie in This #1, 2020 Colored pencil on archival museum board 80 x 108 inches (203.2 x 274.3 cm)
80
There is No Lie in This #4, 2020 Colored pencil on archival museum board
x 108 inches (203.2 x 274.3 cm)
There is No Lie in This #2, 2020 Colored pencil on archival museum board 80 x 108 inches (203.2 x 274.3 cm)
ZIPORA FRIED
Born in Haifa, Israel
Lives and works in New York, NY
EDUCATION
1990 Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021 Zipora Fried, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, May 8 – June 12, 2021
2019 As the Ground Turns Solid, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, November 21, 2019 –January 11, 2020
2016 Late October, On Stellar Rays, New York, NY, October 23 – December 4, 2016
2015 Zipora Fried: Some Things Have Meaning, Others Don’t, Marfa Contemporary, Marfa, TX, October 9, 2015 – January 4, 2016
2014 I Hope the Moon Explodes, On Stellar Rays, New York, NY, September 7 – October 12, 2014
2011 Salon Noir, On Stellar Rays, New York, NY, September 7 – October 23, 2011
2009 Trust Me. Be Careful., On Stellar Rays, New York, NY, September 9 – October 25, 2009
2007 MACHISMO, PS Project Space, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2006 Works and Days, AR Contemporary, Milan, Italy
2005 All I Thought and Forgot, Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Brussels, Belgium
2004 Weighting Time, Galerie Terre Rouge/Musée d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2019 The Whole Picture, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, March 1 – April 6, 2019
2017 Social Photography V, Carriage Trade, New York, NY, July 11 – September 17, 2017
2016 Persuasive Percussion, On Stellar Rays, New York, NY, July 7 – August 12, 2016
Mount Analogue, curated by Neville Wakefield, Darrow Contemporary, Aspen, CO, July 15 –August 15, 2016
2015 Aurora, Dallas Arts District, Dallas, TX
Galeria Mario Sequeira, Braga, Portugal, May 30 – September 30, 2015
2014 Good Night, Mister Procrustes, Galerie Steinek, Vienna, Austria, September 3 –November 8, 2014
Site/Displace, Kristen Lorello Gallery, New York, NY, July 21 – August 15, 2014
Zipora Fried / Basim Magdy / Nabil Nahas / Dani Tull, On Stellar Rays, New York, NY, May 18 – June 21, 2014
Listen Up! Curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt and Tim Goossens, 1after320, New Delhi, India
2013 Rothfield Collection of Contemporary Israeli Art, American University, Washington D.C., September 3 – October 20, 2013
Dark Paradise, curated by Tim Goossens, The Clocktower Gallery, New York, NY; Galeria Nara Roesler, Sao Paulo, Brazil, June 15 – August 10, 2013
Nevermore, On Stellar Rays, New York, NY, February 2 – March 10, 2013
2012 The Locus of Control, curated by Patrick Gibson and Candice Madey, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, NY, April 30 – May 6, 2012
2012 Drawing a Line in the Sand, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY, February 2 – March 31, 2012
Ruins in Reverse, Room East Gallery, New York, NY, January 8 – March 4, 2012
2010 Total Recall, Public Art Fund, MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY, November 3, 2010 –September 6, 2011
Zipora Fried, Margarete Jakschik, and Sam Windett, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, October 5 – October 31, 2010
Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, May 23 – October 18, 2010
Escape from New York, Minus Space, Brooklyn, NY, April 19 – May 8, 2010
Reconstruction #1, On Stellar Rays, New York, NY, February 28 – April 4, 2010
Welcome Home, Apartment Draschan/Kunsthall, Vienna, Austria, 2010
2009 The Drawing Room, Mireille Mosler, New York, NY, December 15, 2009 – January 29, 2010
Escape from New York, curated by Matthew Deleget, Project Space Spare Room, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, May 8 – 29, 2009
Creative Migration: Austrian Arts in the US, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, NY, April 15 –May 14, 2009
Wrong: A Program of Text and Image, curated by Jibade-Khalil Huffman, 8th Veil Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2009
2008 Minus Space, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, October 21, 2008 – May 4, 2009
A/R Contemporary, Milan, Italy, 2008
Singular Friends: Heaving up on one another’s shoulders, curated by Ajay Kurian, 41 Wooster, New York, NY, 2008
Zeitraumzeit, curated by Barbara Höller and Brigitte Pamperl, Künstlerhaus Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2008
2007 A BIT O WHITE, Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Brussels, Belgium, March 15 –May 6, 2007
Beyond the Pale, curated by Tairone Bastien and Candice Madey, Moti Hasson Gallery, New York, NY, 2007
Do You Want a Piece of Me? Bespoke Gallery, New York, NY, 2007
Escape from New York, Sydney Non Objective Contemporary Art Projects, Sydney, Australia, 2007
2006 The North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND, 2006
Take Off, Hebel_121, Basel, Switzerland, 2006
De Natura, k/haus Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2006
2Steps, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway
Minimalisms, Deutsche Bank Gallery, New York, NY, 2006
UH Galleries, London, United Kingdom, 2006
2005 Means Without End, Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY, 2005
Early Fabricated, Sydney, Australia, 2005
2000 Westöstlicher Divan, Museum auf Abruf, Vienna, Austria, 2000
COLLECTIONS
Albertina, Museum of Graphic Art, Vienna, Austria
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
The American University Museum, Washington DC
Austrian Government’s Permanent Collection of Contemporary Art
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
The Jewish Museum, Vienna, Austria
Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden
Speyer Family Collection, New York, NY
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
Werner Kramarsky Collection, New York, NY
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
