Suzan Frecon: oil paintings

David Zwirner is pleased to present new oil paintings by Suzan Frecon at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York, marking the artist’s seventh solo exhibition at the gallery.

Frecon is known for abstract oil paintings and works on paper that—as she describes her lifelong practice—“speak for themselves.” Made over long stretches of time, her work embodies the durational activity of painting itself and invites the viewer’s sustained attention: these, she says, “are not pictures that you look at. They are paintings that you experience.”¹

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Image: Installation view: Suzan Frecon: oil paintings, David Zwirner, New York, 2020

¹Suzan Frecon, “text and related work,” in Suzan Frecon: oil paintings and sun. Exh. cat. (New York: David Zwirner, 2015), p. 63.

The galleries are open to the public with a limited number of visitors allowed into the exhibition spaces at a time, in accordance with city guidelines.

To schedule your visit to this exhibition, please click here.

To learn more about the enhanced safety measures currently in place at this location and others, please click here.

Location

537 West 20th Street New York

Dates

September 10—October 17, 2020

Artist

Suzan Frecon

Press Release

oil paintings

Suzan Frecon

stone cathedral, 2019

Oil on linen

Overall: 108 1/2 x 87 5/8 inches
(275.6 x 222.6 cm)
Panel, each: 54 1/4 x 87 5/8 inches
(137.8 x 222.6 cm)

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“Composition works with color, with surface, and with light to create an abstract visual reality that I wish to exist solely on its strength as art…. There is no need for the embellishment of ‘story.’”

—Suzan Frecon, oil paintings and sun

“In Frecon’s work, color and form are inseparable. When she talks about her fondness for earth reds or red-oxide colors, she will cite as inspiration Minoan frescoes and the brilliant red found in Chinese lacquers, wax seals, and paper lanterns, among many other things.... In both counterpoint to and tandem with this exploration of color and color juxtapositions, she has returned to a specific compositional structure.”

—John Yau, “The Places Suzan Frecon’s Art Takes Me”, in Suzan Frecon, 2020

Installation view, Suzan Frecon: oil paintings, David Zwirner, New York, 2020

“I hardly feel directed by Frecon’s art, yet at some level it controls me, paradoxically leaving my senses free to do as they wish. For what they wish is to experience Frecon’s art.”

—Richard Shiff, in Suzan Frecon: painting, 2017

Suzan Frecon

yellow lantern, 2018

Oil on linen

Overall: 87 1/2 x 108 inches
(222.3 x 274.3 cm)
Panel, each: 87 1/2 x 54 inches
(222.3 x 137.2 cm)

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Suzan Frecon

vernal breath of plum, 2019

Oil on linen

Overall: 87 3/8 x 108 inches
(221.9 x 274.3 cm)
Panel, each: 87 3/8 x 54 inches
(221.9 x 137.2 cm)

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“The merging of form, color, light, material, and texture rewards extended looking: to soak in the muted and soft light of brushwood haematites is a very different experience from witnessing the intensity of orange and bluebird blue illumination. Each work stirs up different wordless feelings, even as we eventually come back to words to try and understand what happened.”

—John Yau, “The Places Suzan Frecon’s Art Takes Me”

“Each shape is of a single hue of remarkable depth and inner variation, partly due to the pigment being suspended in rich concentrations of oil mediums that can vary from glossy to matte.”

—Stephen Westfall, Art in America

Suzan Frecon

mars stealing the night, 2019

Oil on linen

Overall: 87 1/2 x 108 1/4 inches
(222.3 x 275 cm)
Panel, each: 87 1/2 x 54 1/8 inches
(222.3 x 137.5 cm)

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Installation view, Suzan Frecon: oil paintings, David Zwirner, New York, 2020

“I always favored asymmetry over symmetry. I wanted to break up the symmetry and then recreate a balance through the paint... Certainly, I love architecture and I’m always fascinated with looking at it anywhere and it does influence my work.”

—Suzan Frecon in conversation with John Yau, The Brooklyn Rail

Suzan Frecon

siena maria, 2019

Oil on linen

Overall: 87 3/8 x 108 inches
(221.9 x 274.3 cm)
Panel, each: 87 3/8 x 54 inches
(221.9 x 137.2 cm)

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“...I like the idea of empty space and full space. (Some people call it figure and ground) and I like keeping that tension, between full and emptiness, in the painting somehow.”

—Suzan Frecon in conversation with John Yau, The Brooklyn Rail

“Our attention shifts between the dominant shape’s relation to the rectangle and the dialogue established between the two panels. The asymmetry invites closer scrutiny, as one seeks to discover an underlying order, which...never spells itself out.”

—John Yau, “The Places Suzan Frecon’s Art Takes Me”

Suzan Frecon

mars indigo, 2019

Oil on linen

Overall: 87 3/8 x 108 1/2 inches
(221.9 x 275.6 cm)
Panel, each: 87 3/8 x 54 1/4 inches
(221.9 x 137.8 cm)

Inquire

Installation view, Suzan Frecon: oil paintings, David Zwirner, New York, 2020

“For Frecon, paint is not just a color; it is a material possessing certain malleable properties. Her surfaces run the gamut from shiny to matte. She can apply the paint thinly and loosely, leaving traces of brushstrokes, or she can arrive at something smooth and taut. She has developed dry, porous surfaces and skins of paint as sleek as polished marble. Often, the surface changes within a single painting, with each area clearly demarcated by color and thickness. This devotion to paint’s materiality further defines the forms and color.”

—John Yau, “The Places Suzan Frecon’s Art Takes Me”

“Frecon...relishes the unpredictable variation in surface quality that results from her manual application of viscous paint and oil; her edges are hand rendered, retaining an organic feel that diminishes any potential for conceptual order that the measured geometry might advance. Color, reflectivity, organic handling: these qualities establish ‘visual reasons.’”

—Richard Shiff, in Suzan Frecon: painting

Accompanying the exhibition is a new David Zwirner Books publication with text by John Yau.

Available for preorder
Forthcoming November 2020

Inquire about works by Suzan Frecon

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Installation view of the exhibition, Suzan Frecon: oil paintings, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2020.

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