Bernard Frize - Logische Schlussfolgerung

Bernard Frize Logische Schlussfolgerung
13 February - 27 March 2021

How can painting be about its own creative process? How is it able to make the conceptual performance of painting visible through the means of its own creation? Since the mid-1970s, Bernard Frize has been exploring just that in his playfully rational works, which combine intellectualism with a sensuous experience.

Frize‘s exhibition Logische Schlussfolgerung (Logical Conclusion) at the Gallery features a recent series of works that reflect the artist’s ongoing exploration of issues inherent to painting. The large canvases are entirely covered with vertical and horizontal, sometimes interwoven lines of color that create a clear and rigid structure. He paints orthogonal grids, crosshatchings, and lines, using a broad brush to lay out the sections of color. These seemingly mechanical paintings are void of any brushwork that might hint at a personal style. Instead, Frize concentrates on the act of painting and its conditions. Each set of movements is meticulously thought through and planned. From time to time, he relies on the help of assistants, directing them as they take turns applying the paint on the large canvases with a broad brush or a paint roll. Ideally, these precise experiments are realized in a single gesture and require no further corrections, thereby letting his impressive works document a choreographed performative act.

The brilliant diversity found in the artist’s works is indebted to a rich vocabulary of forms. Frize’s series are experiments with a wide variety of shapes and patterns that remind us of minimalist art and Color Field painting, perhaps even Albrecht Dürer’s Great Piece of Turf. Sometimes he uses amorphous forms that create marbled structures all over the surface, while other times geometric elements intersect at right angles. Once in a while, he will use brushstrokes to create blended schemes of color. These visually startling clusters of patterns and brushstrokes composed on the expansive canvases are instruments in the orchestra of forms in Frize’s experiments with painterly structures and abstract gestures.

Bernard Frize, born 1954 in St. Mandé, France, lives and works in Berlin and Paris. He was awarded the Fred-Thieler-Preis in 2011 and the Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis in 2015. Solo exhibitions (selection): 2019 Bernard Frize. without remorse, Centre Pompidou, Paris 2015 Bernard Frize – Günter Umberg, Fondation Fernet-Branca, St. Louis, France; This is a Bridge, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; 2011 Fred-Thieler-Preis für Malerei, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; 2010 And How and Where and When, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; 2007 Fat Paintings, Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense; 2003 Hands on, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; aplat, Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; 2002 S.M.A.K., Gent; Haags Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag; 1999-2000 Carré d'art, Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes; Museum moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen; Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster.
Collections (selection): Tate Gallery, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris; MUKHA, Antwerp; SMAK, Gent; Fondation LVMH, Shanghai, China; The Chaptel Collection, Hangzhou, China; Musée d'art contemporain, Montréal; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main; Städel Museum, Frankfurt/Main; Kunstmuseum Basel; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Kunsthaus Zürich; mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich; Carré d'art Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes; Musée départemental de Rochechouart; Musée de Grenoble; Musée d’Art Moderne, St. Etienne; National Museum of Art Osaka; Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.