Zipora Fried's Inaugural Solo Exhibition @ Sean Kelly Los Angeles Is Felt Before It Is Seen

Trust Me, Be Careful, I Like Your Shoes is an emotional polygraph that let’s you see through the eyes of a newborn.

Zipora Fried
Let Them Talk, 2024
signed by artist, verso
colored pencil on archival museum board
paper: 60 x 80 inches (152.4 x 203.2 cm)
framed: 61 5/16 x 81 5/16 x 1 3/4 inches (155.7 x 206.5 x 4.4 cm)

text by Summer Bowie

At the moment of every human’s birth, our field of vision is best at about twelve inches, or roughly the distance between a mother’s eyes and her breast. This is about how close you want to get to the work of Zipora Fried once you’ve seen it from a distance. It is like looking at life through the lens of a baby who is feeling and sensing the world wholly with their right brain. In Trust Me, Be Careful, I Like Your Shoes, Zipora Fried’s debut solo exhibition at Sean Kelly Los Angeles, the artist continues to refine her ability to conceal just enough of the scrutable so that you can properly feel the work before you know how to think about it. These works blur the lines between figurative and abstract, portrait and landscape, monumental scale and unsettling fragility. It is ultimately performance as a form of conceptual practice. 

Although it is a practice of interminable repetition, each time an idea is revisited, it is done so from a novel perspective. Playing off of her ’09 exhibition at On Stellar Rays called Trust me, be careful, which itself was taken from the text of a “drawing” in that exhibition which read: “The stammering of history, trust me, be careful, who has the sickest shoes, trust me, be careful,” it is a story of marching through the cyclical passage of time with an acute awareness of how each new step is unique to the last.

Zipora Fried
The Glass Octopus, 2024
signed by artist, verso
colored pencil on archival museum board
paper: 60 x 96 inches (152.4 x 243.8 cm)
framed: 61 5/16 x 97 1/4 x 1 3/4 inches (155.7 x 247 x 4.4 cm)

From a distance, tiny individual lines of color blur together into one fluid, unending stroke, which makes for an experience that is as philosophical as it is emotional. It feels Hegelian in both the interconnected idealism that it exemplifies, as well as in the synthesis of opposing perspectives that are resolved in the precision of their balance. Then again, at close proximity, they are Kierkegaardian in their boundless detail; millions of individual strokes existing and intersecting on their own discrete paths. There is certainly something divine in these details.

It is this tension that beckons the viewer to adjust their vantage point multiple times. If you stand and observe people engaging with the work, you start to see interesting patterns emerge. Each piece is initially experienced from a generous distance, moving from one side to the next. As you approach, new details began to emerge with each successive step forward. And from as close as common courtesy will allow, people tend to again start scanning from one side to the next before they back up to see it anew. If one were to trace the footsteps of all who attended the opening reception, I imagine one might find a sequence of marks that resemble the second half of a coherent dialogue between the floor and the walls. 

These are works that must be experienced in person. They float in their frames unmediated by glass, allowing the viewer to get in close enough to be visually enveloped by fields of color. From here we can see the gritty texture of the colored pencil. We can see just how these tightly-controlled strokes of equal length and exacting proximity start to slowly and delicately unfold into loose, sweeping strokes that breathe easy and intersect with other colors freely. These are the moments that allow for the character of each piece to express itself, which is ultimately only scrutable from a distance. 

 
 

The titles of her pieces often convey an oscillation of contradicting thoughts and feelings. There are the colored pencil drawings A Sad Parade (2025), I Was Perfect, I Was Wrong (2025), as well as the massive sculptural drawing on paper titled All I Thought and Forgot # 3 (deep cobalt green) (2016). One can’t help but wonder how such a thin and sweeping scroll of paper could ever support the imposing weight of such densely layered marks. These are the contradictions that typify the human experience and Fried is a master mark maker with an acute understanding of the affecting power of color. Her hand paces back and forth like the needle of a polygraph test, communicating an inner truth that is not necessarily involuntary, but it is perhaps articulated more clearly this way than in words. 

 

Zipora Fried
All I Thought and Forgot #3 (deep cobalt green), 2016
colored pencil on paper
312 x 53 1/2 inches (792.5 x 135.9 cm)

 

This is visual art that encourages you to look closer and alludes to the possibility that you are overly dependent on your eyes. As if to suggest that seeing less allows you to feel a lot more. On either side of the gallery we find two of Fried’s ceramic sculptures. They are inspired by ink drawings that are not on view. They are also inspired by kokeshi dolls; a Japanese tradition of wooden figurines that features a head with painted face, and a body without arms or legs. However, with these sculptures, even their faces are obscured by a crown of dripping hair. A singular, unending moment that reveals nothing but ambivalence. Again, the artist is choreographing our movement around an object without beginning or end. Seen from the other side, we might consider that when we allow ourselves to feel more, it’s often easier to see things more clearly.

 

Zipora Fried
Miron, 2025
glazed ceramic
51 x 16 3/4 inches (129.5 x 42.5 cm)

 

Trust Me, Be Careful, I Like Your Shoes is on view through May 3 @ Sean Kelly Los Angeles 1357 N Highland Avenue

A'Driane Nieves Dismantles the Policing of Emotionality in self-evident truths @ VSF in Los Angeles

A'Driane Nieves, a new world is still possible (so hold onto your radical imagination), 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles / Dallas / Seoul. Photo credit: Julia Gillard.

A’Driane Nieves’ debut exhibition at VSF, self-evident truths. Combining paintings on canvas and paper with new explorations in neon and audio installation, this ambitious exhibition is also Nieves’ first on the West Coast.

Nieves’ dynamic gestural abstractions extend from a writing practice and the therapeutic potential of movement, composition, and color. A self-taught painter of over a decade, Nieves began making work after a therapist suggested painting might be a somatic path through which the artist could move to overcome the impacts of childhood abuse, particularly emotional suppression. In spite of, or perhaps because of the weightiness of this genesis, Nieves’ paintings often carry an energy of joyful, empowered liberation.

self-evident truths is a wry play on the US Constitution’s famous refrain (“we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...), she asks “whose truths?, self-evident to whom?”

self-evident truths is on view through April 6 @ VSF, 812 N Highland Ave. Los Angeles

Günther Förg's Diverse Utopia-Critical Body of Work Dissected @ Galerie Max Hetzler

 
 

Günther Förg’s comprehensive and multidisciplinary oeuvre, which spans five decades, includes painting, drawing, and murals, as well as sculpture and photography. The focus is on material, color, and space. The artist's experimental approach to abstraction and monochrome painting was directed against the trend toward figuration that prevailed in Germany in the 1980s. His works made continuous reference to 20th-century modernism, whose utopia he critically questioned. In this context, he engaged with art movements as diverse as early modernism, referencing artists such as Edvard Munch, or the American abstract expressionists including Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Cy Twombly. Elements of conceptual art can also be found throughout Förg’s work, which additionally challenge traditional interpretations.

Günther Förg is on view through February 24th at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45, Berlin.

Geoffrey Chadsey's "Sly glancer, Angry dancer" @ Michael Benevento in Los Angeles

 
Geoffrey Chadsey, Fibro Flay, 2023. All images courtesy of Michael Benevento.

Geoffrey Chadsey, Fibro Flay, 2023. All images courtesy of Michael Benevento.

 

Opening June 10, Michael Benevento will present New York-based artist Geoffrey Chadsey’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Sly glancer, Angry dancer.

In striking psychological and virtuosic renderings, Chadsey deepens his longstanding interest in fraught masculinity and queer subject-hood. Chadsey’s approach to composition is distinct—reminiscent of the Surrealists’ exquisite corpse based surprising juxtapositions, Chadsey’s figures stand before you in all their complexity—ostentatious, anxious, eager, abject or aloof. These figures present themselves in various states of peacockery, wanting to be marveled at, or regarded with admiring disgust.

Sly glancer, Angry dancer is on view through July 29 @ Michael Benevento, 3712 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles

 
 

Intersect Art and Design Presents Intersect Palm Springs

Intersect Palm Springs, which ran from February 10-13, 2022, brought together a dynamic mix of more than 50 established and emerging contemporary and modern art and design galleries.

The Fair featured two Curated Spaces:

Good Vibrations, organized by Shana Nys Dambrot (Arts Editor, LA Weekly) and Hunter Drohojowska-Philp (Author, Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s), offered an expanded view of geometric abstraction as it has evolved in Southern California from the 1950s to include the properties of light and the emotional and transcendent uses of color. Lorser Feitelson, Karl Benjamin, John Miller, Peter Lodato, Jim Isermann, Patrick Wilson, Dani Tull, Yunhee Min, Knowledge Bennett, and Jen Stark are among the artists to be included in this multi-generational show.

ZZyzx Redux, curated by Bernard Leibov (Director, BoxoPROJECTS), and presented with support from The Art Collective Fine Art Services, was inspired by that remote corner of the Mojave Desert which demonstrates the full cycle of modern Southern Californian desert history: from Indigenous trade route; to gold rush era federal fort; to railroad outpost; to a much hyped health resort; and finally an environmental research station. These cycles have spurred optimism, creative development, and new technologies as well as related aspects of dislocation, exploitation, and environmental damage. The exhibition looks at the sustainability of the current land rush in the local area through artworks both inspired by the attractant qualities of the region (light, space, architecture, nature, lifestyle) and those reminding us where history has taken us before. The exhibition includes work by artists Blake Baxter, Diane Best, Ryan Campbell, Gerald Clarke Jr., Sofia Enriquez, Kim Manfredi, Carlos Ramirez, Cara Romero, Aili Schmeltz, Ryan Schneider, Phillip K. Smith III, and Kim Stringfellow.

 

Tear by Richard Hudson. Presented by Michael Goedhuis at Intersect Palm Springs 2022 Focus on Form: Sculpture Garden

 

Focus on Form: Sculpture Garden provided a spotlight on sculpture at the entry to the Fair, featuring 18 large-scale works by such artists as Stephanie Bachiero (Peter Blake Gallery), Michael DeJong (New Discretions), Andy Dixon (Over the Influence), Tara de la Garza (bG Gallery), Richard Hudson (Michael Goedhuis), Robert Indiana (Galerie Gmurzynska), Dominique Labauvie (Bleu Acier), Robert Raphael (SITUATIONS), Alex Schweder (Edward Cella Art & Architecture), Jesse Small (Nancy Hoffman Gallery), Julian Voss-Andreae (HOHMANN), and Ben Allanoff.

Works from the Fair will be online at Artsy.net, Intersect’s exclusive online marketplace partner, through March 3, 2022.

Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection In Miami

Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection celebrates their most recent acquisitions, which consists of a sizable selection of international African and African Diaspora artists. Inspired by his upbringing in a number of Latin American countries, Pérez began collecting the work of Cuban and Afro-Latino artists several years ago. Recently he has expanded that focus to include artists of the full African diaspora. Allied with Power shows the result of these years of dedicated effort and exploration.

The exhibition highlights artists whose works embody the possibilities and complexities of our contemporary moment. Allied with Power showcases a wide range of practices and thematics, including abstraction, representation, politics, spirituality, and race. Collapsing national borders, the artists in the exhibition ally with power, representing a kaleidoscope of voices that declare their authority.

The exhibition includes works by Igshaan Adams, Juan Carlos Alom, Firelei Báez, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Kudzanai Chiurai, Jonathas de Andrade, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Tomás Esson, Genevieve Gaignard, Sam Gilliam, David Goldblatt, Sonia Gomes, Nicholas Hlobo, Pieter Hugo, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Rashid Johnson, Isaac Julien, Kiluanji Kia Henda, David Koloane, Guido Llinás, Arjan Martins, Misheck Masamvu, Manuel Mendive, Zanele Muholi, Christopher Myers, Odili Donald Odita, Naudline Pierre, Robin Rhode, Deborah Roberts, Chéri Samba, Yinka Shonibare, Elias Sime, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Mickalene Thomas, Guy Tillim, Kara Walker, Stanley Whitney, Sue Williamson, and Portia Zvavahera.

Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art is on view through summer 2021 @ Pérez Art Museum Miami 1103 Biscayne Blvd.

Oscar Murillo: Manifestation @ David Zwirner London

A new series of paintings by the Columbian artist, Oscar Murillo, are on view for the first time at David Zwirner’s London gallery. Murillo’s manifestation paintings, in particular, represent a marked evolution in the artist’s engagement with process. These paintings explore a considered approach to mark-making, and when viewed together, highlight the artist’s inventive and engaging studio practice. The exhibition also includes a new installation building on Murillo’s sustained interest in travel and questions around labour and the geographical flow of humanity. The artist’s body of work demonstrates a nuanced understanding of globalization, and the multiple ways in which ideas, languages, and even everyday items are displaced and increasingly intermingled. Manifestation is on view through July 26 at David Zwirner 24 Grafton Street, London. photographs courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner.

Andy Warhol: From A To B And Back Again @ Whitney Museum Of American Art In New York

Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again positions Warhol's career as a continuum, demonstrating that he didn't slow down after surviving the assassination attempt that nearly took his life in 1968, but entered into a period of intense experimentation. The show illuminates the breadth, depth, and interconnectedness of the artist’s production: from his beginnings as a commercial illustrator in the 1950s, to his iconic Pop masterpieces of the early 1960s, to the experimental work in film and other mediums from the 1960s and 70s, to his innovative use of readymade abstraction and the painterly sublime in the 1980s. His repetitions, distortions, camouflaging, incongruous color, and recycling of his own imagery challenge our faith in images and the value of cultural icons, anticipating the profound effects and issues of the current digital age. From A To B And Back Again is on view through March 31, 2019 at Whitney Museum Of American Art 99 Gansevoort Street New York. photographs courtesy of Whitney Museum Of American Art

Artist Keith Mayerson's Meta-Narrative of Appropriated Americana Explored In "My American Dream" At Marlborough Chelsea in New York

My American Dream is a large installation and body of work by artist Keith Mayerson created over the last decade. Various incarnations of this project, or “chapters”, first appeared in exhibitions in New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Houston, and Brussels, most recently culminating in his 42-painting installation, curated by Stuart Comer into the 2014 Whitney Biennial. My American Dream is a meta-narrative, consisting of more recent personal images from photographs—of his husband and himself, his family, and world—and also from a long career of painting from appropriated imagery and abstraction. This particular body of work began in 2005, building on the hope that one day the cosmology would be exhibited in a site-specific composition. Marlborough Chelsea presents the large cosmology of the work (accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog) to inspire and promote a progressive, positive view of America’s past in the hope to help make a better future. My American Dream will be on view until December 23, 2015 at Marlborough Chelsea, 545 West 25th Street, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer