ACFNY RECOMENDS | EXHIBITION | ZIPORA FRIED – I HOPE THE MOON EXPLODES
Zipora Fried’s exhibition I Hope the Moon Explodes marks the gallery’s third solo exhibition of Fried’s work, presenting an expansive body of graphite and oil pastel drawings on both mylar and pigment prints, along with c-prints and a video.
A new body of large-scale drawings with graphite and colored oil pastel will be presented for the first time. Fried has long been interested in societal reluctance to probe subsurface emotions and the futility of language to fully express subconscious impulses. Her long-standing drawing practice is rooted in a refutation of language, impulsively repeating gestures that suggest script but that are decidedly nonlinguistic, demanding an intense physical engagement.
Historical referents and animism also permeate the exhibition, appropriating a visual iconography from an archive of personal and cultural sources. Disinterested in primary meaning, Fried layers the familiar and the archetypal, seeking to maximize the dichotomy between outer expression and inner feeling, and destabilizing the position that pits culture destructively against nature.
In addition to works on paper in various media, Fried has created a new video entitled You Can Have Me Back, with accompanying sound by the Brooklyn-based band Pretty Wilds. The video presents found footage of Japanese and American robotic technologies with unsettling human and animalistic movement, resembling an atavistic remnant of our present selves. Through Fried’s affective responses to symbolic modes of communications and her interest in the broader cultural subconscious, I Hope the Moon Explodes creates a dark and beautiful mirror into our collective pathos
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Zipora Fried studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. Her work is represented in a number of museum collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; American University Museum, Washington, DC; The Albertina Museum, Vienna; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm. Fried is also the recipient of numerous awards for her experimental films, which have been featured in festivals worldwide.
VENUE
On Stellar Ray’s
1 Rivington Street
New York, NY 10002