Viola Frey "Every Man, Every Woman"
Nancy Hoffman Gallery
This event has ended.
Frey loved and celebrated the human figure in over-scale proportions throughout her oeuvre, drawing from the model in the studio, squeezing pieces of clay and transform-ing the moist clumps into giant sculptures of every man, every woman. Her larger-than-life men and women are ordinary, thinking, reflective beings that gaze out at the world, their faces revealing an inner life marked and lined by matters of consequence. In their heroic scale they transport the viewer to a time when everything was larger than life itself, the innocent child peering upwards.
This sense of wonder pervades all of Frey’s work. “Stubborn Woman, Orange Hands” is dressed pertly in her pink birthday suit. She sits upright, supported by her huge orange hands, looking into space, confident of her stature, unabashed by her curves and golden streaked tresses styled in ‘50s fashion. She is a symbol of the artist’s philosophy that man is more powerful in his blue power suit and woman more powerful in her birthday suit! Echoing this philosophy is “Standing White Majestic Man,” Frey’s final sculpture, created just before she died in 2004. For the first time, the artist decided to include in an exhibition three major pieces glazed in white, thus focusing on the beauty of form, undiluted by the joy of her palette. Standing with arm outstretched, this every man beckons with one hand, while his other is perched on his hip. No longer a symbol of power, and/or intimidation, every man has become a sympathetic personality. Realizing this stance with arm outstretched was the artist’s final feat of engineering in a medium not typically associated with monumental sculpture.
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Schedule
from January 07, 2010 to February 20, 2010