Pia Fries: heliopedi
Miles McEnery Gallery, New York
7 September - 21 October 2023
floredot C, 2023
Oil and silkscreen on wood
67 x 86 5/8 inches, 170.2 x 220 cm
© Pia Fries, courtesy Miles McEnery Gallery
Miles McEnery Gallery presents heliopedi, an exhibition of paintings by PIA FRIES, on view at 515 West 22nd Street in New York City.
In this cycle of paintings—which spans 18 years—Pia Fries holds freedom and limits in taut balance. Vigorous gestural abstraction and razor-sharp precision of line are intertwined. Fragmented and enlarged, 17th century etchings—fractions of the male form by Dutch engraver Hendrick Goltzius, and flora and fauna by German entomologist and botanical illustrator, Maria Sibylla Merian—appear repeatedly in the compositions on view, peeking out from Fries’ own bold and decisive sweeps of oil paint.
“We discover a new wildness of material, image and meaning in Fries’ paintings,” writes Christopher Bedford in the catalogue essay, “Fries is interested in describing something new—a new type of painting more grounded in discovery than in either abstract or representational. Her paintings are both, and she refuses to choose.”
PIA FRIES (b. 1955, Beromünster, Switzerland) attended the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland, before studying under Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. From 2014 to 2023, Pia Fries held a professorship at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts.
Over the course of her nearly four-decade career, Pia Fries has exhibited internationally at numerous institutions and galleries. In 1999, her work was included in the 48th Venice Biennale exhibition, dAPERTutto, curated by Harald Szeemann. Notable solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland; Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Germany; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany; Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop, Germany; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, and elsewhere.
Pia Fries’ work is held in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland; Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Neues Museum Nürnberg, Germany; Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany; and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany, among others.
Pia Fries lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany and Lucerne, Switzerland.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Christopher Bedford.
MILES McENERY GALLERY
515 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
