Studio: Suzan Frecon | David Zwirner

“A picture reaches the plane of being art when it’s ungraspable and you really can’t explain it.”

—Suzan Frecon

Suzan Frecon is known for abstract oil paintings and works on paper that are at once reductive and expressive. Made over long stretches of time, her canvases embody the durational activity of painting itself and invite the viewer’s sustained attention: these, as the artist herself has noted, are “paintings that you experience.”

Suzan Frecon

annunciata, 2019

Oil on linen

Overall: 87 3/8 x 108 x 1 1/2 inches

221.9 x 274.3 x 3.8 cm

“With the long summer days, I have much more time to work in my studio.... I’m happiest when I can show [the paintings] in natural light, because that means there will be so many more dimensions that the viewer can experience.”

—Suzan Frecon

Antonello da Messina, Virgin Annunciate, c. 1476. Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo

“While Frecon’s paintings are
often inspired by a specific experience...the painting finally dislodges itself from its origins and enters, as she herself put it, ‘a high plane of abstraction.’”

—John Yau, poet and critic

Interior view, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo, 2018. Courtesy the Italy project told through architecture, funded by the MiBACT Directorate for Contemporary Creativity.
Photo by Alessandro Lanzetta

Photo by Suzan Frecon, 2020

“In architecture, there’s the spandrel—this little triangle that has no apparent function—but which is important to the effect of the arch....
I do think of your watercolors a little bit like that.”

—Marcella Durand, in conversation with Suzan Frecon

Suzan Frecon

war, big, 2020

Watercolor on Indian hemp paper

Framed: 28 1/4 x 21 3/4 inches
71.8 x 55.2 cm

Photo by Julie Brown Harwood, 2015

Suzan Frecon

vermilion solo, 2019

Watercolor on agate-burnished Indian hemp paper

Framed: 20 5/8 x 25 1/4 inches
52.4 x 64.1 cm

Installation view, Suzan Frecon: Recent Oil Paintings, David Zwirner, London, 2017

“It is not enough to have color. Something has to hold the color, and the art. Composition! I cannot express how important it is.”

—Suzan Frecon

Suzan Frecon

orange bluebird study, 2019

Watercolor on old Indian rag paper

Framed: 15 3/4 x 18 3/4 inches
40 x 47.6 cm

Photo by Julie Brown Harwood, 2015

“We scrutinize these paintings both for the pleasure they give us and the mystery they retain…. The paintings challenge us as they nourish our senses: Can we let go of words and just look?”

—John Yau

Suzan Frecon in her studio with book of paint, 2015. Photo by Julie Brown Harwood

All John Yau quotes excerpted from a new catalogue to be published on the occasion of Suzan Frecon’s solo exhibition of paintings opening at David Zwirner New York in September 2020.

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