Pia Fries Represented by Miles McEnery Gallery

NEW YORK – MILES MCENERY GALLERY is delighted to announce its representation of Pia Fries.

Pia Fries reinterprets abstraction by sensationally combining a variety of textures and pigments to create striking and multidimensional gestural compositions. The Swiss-born painter initially studied sculpture in Lucerne, Switzerland, prior to becoming a student of Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany. The artist’s background in sculpture is evident in her practice throughout her wide-ranging body of paintings. Working with a sophisticated assortment of mediums, Fries alters the way in which the materials interact on the canvas. Her unique ability to transform pictorial space is conveyed through the textured and intricately layered elements of her paintings. By layering copious amounts of oil paint on top of transferred images and geometric patterns, Fries produces an intensely visual sense of movement for the viewer to follow.

PIA FRIES (b. 1955, Beromünster, Switzerland) completed her studies in studio art from 1977 to 1980 at the Lucerne University of Applied Science and Arts, with specialization in sculpture under Anton Eglof. From 1980 to 1986 she studied painting under Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Recent solo exhibitions include “FABELFAKT,” Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Germany; “corpus transludi,” Mai 36 Galerie, Zürich, Switzerland; Gund Gallery/Kenyon College, Gambier, OH; “parsen und module,” Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France; “Pia Fries: vier winde,” Gerhard Altenbourg Award, Lindenau Museum, Altenburg, Germany; “Hendrick Goltzius and Pia Fries: proteus and polymorphia,” Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany; Moss Art Center, Blacksburg, V A; “seascapes,” Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; “oxiponton,” Galerie Thomas Modern, Munich, Germany; “volume & light,“ Neiman Molenaar & Mai 36 Galerie, Hong Kong, China; “windhand laufbein,” Kunstplattform AKKU, Emmenbrücke, Lucerne, Switzerland.

Recent group exhibitions “Schau, ich bin blind, schau,” Hans and Monika Furer Collection, Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; “Frozen Gesture, ” Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Germany; “Collection of Contemporary Art,” Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland; “Collection of Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung,” Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany; “Drama Queens,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany.

Her work is included in numerous public and private collections including Aargauer Kunsthaus,Aarau, Switzerland; Albright- Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI; FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany ; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany; Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Neues Museum – Staatliches Museum für Kunst und Design in Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany; Sammlung Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung, Hanover, Germany; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany; Studio A, Otterndorf, Germany and Universitätsspital, Zürich, Switzerland.

She is the recipient of many awards, including the Gerhard-Altenbourg Prize, Lindenau Museum Altenburg; Art and Culture Award of the city of Lucerne, Switzerland; Iserlohner Art Scholarship, Villa Wessel Iserlohn; Fred-Thieler Award, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Studio Residency in London, United Kingdom, awarded by the Zug Cultural Foundation, Landis & Gyr; Art Prize Münsterland; Bonn Art Foundation; Nordmann-Prize, Canton of Lucerne; Fine Art Grant of the Canton and City of Lucerne and the Jury Prize of the six central Swiss cantons.

Fries lives and works in Düsseldorf and Munich.

http://piafries.com/en/pia-fries-en/