On the 26th of June, Lazarides Rathbone held a private opening for the solo show of Icelandic conceptual and abstract painter, Katrin Fridriks. The artist, whose captivating work London art lovers could only see at art fairs and group shows so far, finally introduced her work with a large elaborate exhibition that will stay on view until the 24th of July. Supported by Steve Lazarides and Fru Tholstrup, artists Jonathan Yeo and Antony Micallef, and her international collectors and friends from music and art world, Katrin’s show fulfilled everyone’s expectations and more.
For this event, Fridriks prepared an entire new body of work whose main theme was monitoring and tracking technology and its affect on human identification. The idea of Flying Awareness is to question the reasoning behind the excessive use of drones and similar devices, and to explore the ways they capture and perceive reality. In order to do so, the artist filmed the entire setup using a drone, and projected that footage along with works as an essential part of it. She also covered an entire area of the gallery with reflective paper, giving the visitors the sensation of flying as they perused the new paintings. This weightless feeling and the levitating effect was present in her work itself, especially in the installation consisting of six large canvases. By mixing her signature fluid color paint and black & white splatters on solid backgrounds, her new pieces appear like different layers floating above each other.
The idea of dissecting this technology is probably most obvious in her minimalist conceptual installation FLY ZONE created with nine round canvases and plexi lines. Representing the layout of a cockpit display, this piece navigating the visitors towards the inside of the gallery. The rest of the exhibition featured new paintings from her Gene & Ethics and Stendhal Syndrome series, as well as new acrylic work on paper.
With this show, Fridriks continues to produce unique works that can be seen both from micro and macro perspective, and with her clever setup and installation, literally and figuratively raises them to a new level.
Photo credit: Cedric Pierre.
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