Suzan Frecon is known for her large-scale oil and watercolour paintings typically inhabited by geometric and asymmetrical forms that interrogate the architecture of painting.
Read MoreFrecon's engagement with geometry began early in her career. In a 2005 interview for The Brooklyn Rail with writer John Yau, she noted that she had 'always craved geometric solutions', taking inspiration from the geometric compositions found in the work of Old Masters such as Cimabue, and the cathedrals that surrounded her during her studies in Paris in the 1960s. The powerful geometry of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, whose work she saw at MoMA PS1, New York, in 1989, also left a lasting impression.
Central to Suzan Frecon's work is an investigation of the structure of painting, and a drive to reach harmony, as she told Art & Antiques in 2012, between the 'empty' and 'full' spaces of a composition. To do this, the artist creates a variety of textures and surfaces within one painting. In notitle (2018), an oil on wood panel painting, for example, the central blue shape's rough brushwork contrasts the smooth brown background.
Products of careful planning, the spatial relationship between the abstract shapes and their environments in Suzan Frecon's paintings prompts thorough contemplation on the viewer's part. In such paintings as noh (2017), half-ellipse forms appear to float in an expanse of colour, exuding what Yau described in a 2017 review for Hyperallergic as 'a state of calm buoyancy'.
Frecon held one of her first solo exhibitions at John Davis Gallery in Akron, Ohio, in 1981. Her work has appeared in the Whitney Biennial twice—in 2000 and 2010 respectively—and her major solo exhibition, form, color, illumination: Suzan Frecon painting (2008), was presented at The Menil Collection in Houston, and Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland. Frecon has been represented by David Zwirner since 2008.
Suzan Frecon's works can be found in the public collections of Diözesanmuseum Freising, Germany; Kunstmuseum Bern; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago; among others.
Suzan Frecon: oil paintings, David Zwirner, New York (2020); Julia Haft-Candell / Suzan Frecon, parrasch heijnen gallery, Los Angeles (2019); Suzan Frecon, David Zwirner, Hong Kong (2018); Ruth Laskey & Suzan Frecon, Ratio 3, San Francisco (2014); Suzan Frecon: drawing painting, The Drawing Center, New York (2002).
Suzan Frecon Group Exhibitions include:
EFAbstract, EFA Project Space, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York (2020); Di fuochi e accesi sensi: painting, Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels (2019); SPLIT, Zürcher Gallery, New York (2017); Architecture of Life, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley (2016); Reductive Minimalism: Women Artists in Dialogue, 1960–2014, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2014).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2020
