Katrin Fridriks
For more than a decade, Katrin Fridriks has been experimenting with the constitutive elements of painting, that is the quality of the paint, its support, as well as a range of unconventional painting techniques, to attain her distinct and outstanding style. It is the unique interplay between the medium, the timing and the artists’ body moving around a canvas on the floor that encompasses the fluid and organic quality of her paintings. Although the artist is best known for large-scale paintings, her truly contemporary artistic practice originated in an early engagement with Performance Art and Land Art as well as her studies of Japanese calligraphy, which were the starting point for her long-term research of the medium of painting. Ensuing from Jackson Pollock’s seminal practice, Fridriks has developed her own personal technique: By transferring the movement and speed of her gestures into the practice, she captures the very act of painting, and thereby turns the picture itself into an event. The sensation of witnessing the painting as it happens before one’s eyes, rather than viewing a conventional self-contained image, is essential for the engaging experiences that Fridriks provides the beholder with. Before consciously contemplating the artwork, the viewer is already …
For more than a decade, Katrin Fridriks has been experimenting with the constitutive elements of painting, that is the quality of the paint, its support, as well as a range of unconventional painting techniques, to attain her distinct and outstanding style. It is the unique interplay between the medium, the timing and the artists’ body moving around a canvas on the floor that encompasses the fluid and organic quality of her paintings. Although the artist is best known for large-scale paintings, her truly contemporary artistic practice originated in an early engagement with Performance Art and Land Art as well as her studies of Japanese calligraphy, which were the starting point for her long-term research of the medium of painting. Ensuing from Jackson Pollock’s seminal practice, Fridriks has developed her own personal technique: By transferring the movement and speed of her gestures into the practice, she captures the very act of painting, and thereby turns the picture itself into an event. The sensation of witnessing the painting as it happens before one’s eyes, rather than viewing a conventional self-contained image, is essential for the engaging experiences that Fridriks provides the beholder with. Before consciously contemplating the artwork, the viewer is already involved sensuously.
Her paintings are thus best described as an occurrence, rather than a static image: The moment of eruption, liquid matter gushing from deep inside, small particles hurtling through the air, dripping all over the intense blue, red or silvery surface, all solid is liquefied and each layer set in motion. This depiction of her abstract painting furthermore alludes to natural occurrences, such as the scene of the outburst of a geyser in her home country, Iceland. The unique and pristine landscape of the geologically active island has been an enormous influence on her work and life. Although applied on a canvas, the paint only seems to have come to a temporary halt, before continuing to swirl and splash over the edges of the canvas—and into the space of the beholder. Rather than capturing a moment in time, her technique evokes a feeling of movement and energy that, on an abstract level, directly relates to the origin of the evolution of the universe.
Internationally exhibited, Fridriks has received high-profile grants from the Ministry of Culture, Higher Education & Research in Luxembourg, the French government for the Olympic Stadium of Nîmes, and among others the Goss-Michael Foundation for the MTV Re-define project, Ralph Lauren Foundation, the Biennial of Liverpool, and the Icelandic Art Center. The title of her latest exhibition at Circle Culture Gallery is derived from her installation “Perception of the Stendhal Syndrome”. Fridriks has been invited to exhibit at the Global Art Affairs Foundation at Palazzo Bembo Venice in the context of the Biennale di Venezia 2015.
Courtesy of Circle Culture Gallery