Pia Fries

Pia Fries, a former student in the masterclass of Gerhard Richter, has become one of the foremost representatives of European abstract painting. Her bold approach to painting reveals colours, forms and structures as individually ordered structures of the self, abandoning all traditional orders and values. Each image follows its own internal logic – seemingly evident to the viewer, yet at the same time utterly inexplicable.

The paint converges, merges, creates paths and traces, leaping out of the blank spaces she leaves. Her paintings are bold and daring. Flowing, stocking movements inform the entire image, at times enhanced and complemented by rhythmic inputs and manual interventions. They follow an inner logic that looks perfectly clear, and yet remains utterly inexplicable. For some time now, Pia Fries has been appropriating structures from found images, which she transfers onto the carrier by silkscreen and then uses as the starting point for her works. —Axel Jablonski