"Bigger, Better, More: The Art of Viola Frey" Exhibition
Museum of Arts & Design
This event has ended.
The first major exhibition of Viola Frey's work since her death in 2004 will feature Frey's colossal clay figures, sculptures, ceramic plates as well as a selection of her paintings and works on paper. Frey emerged in the complex and often contradictory art world of the 1950's, where painting, craft (specifically ceramics), and design often merged and diverged in dynamic ways. Coming from abstract expressionist traditions in the 1950s, she became involved in ceramics as her contemporaries Peter Voulkos and Robert Arneson were taking this medium to new sculptural and expressive horizons. Frey found her unique style and visual vocabulary in her life-long fascination with mass-produced ceramics figurines which she collected in flea markets combining molded and actual versions of these elements in what are known as her "bricolage" sculptures. Frey recounted her own life, as well as late-twentieth century culture, through her art. She is a forerunner in self-revelation by creating sculptures and vignettes based on her own personal relationships, recollections and the people she knew. "Frey is best known for her brilliantly colored, literally larger-than-life ceramic figures of domineering men and over-wrought women," notes Sims. "Not only does Frey reveal her early involvement in painting in the dynamic color glazes of the surfaces of these ceramic sculptures, but she also proves to be a perceptive observer of gender and power issues as they specifically played out in mid-twentieth century America."
[Image: Viola Frey "Weeping Woman" (1990-1991) Ceramic, glaze 76 x 58 x 80 in. © Artists' Legacy Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY]
Media
Schedule
from January 26, 2010 to May 02, 2010