ART-PRESENTATION: Susan Frecon

Suzan Frecon is an artist devoted to a slow process of mastering the medium of paint. Frecon grinds her own pigments and hand mixes them with oils or, to produce encaustic, with melted beeswax. Her large oil paintings on canvas and small encaustic studies on wood record a painstaking exploration of color, texture, transparency, and gesture.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

A solo exhibition with oil paintings and watercolors by Suzan Frecon in on presentation at David Zwirner Gallery in Hong Kong. One of Frecon’s goals has been “to create paintings without boundaries” a notion alluding to their visual expansiveness as well as to the conceptual framework within which the images are seen to reside. Rather than beginning with pre-established forms, Frecon creates structures as she goes, working more with than on the painting. In her words, “the work comes from the work”. Each surface is developed carefully and gradually, evolving from one canvas to the next in a process that combines preparation and intuition, order and chance. Mixing pigments and oils to differing effects, the artist’s almost tactile use of color and contrasting matte and sheen surfaces heightens the visual experience of her work. Depending on the light source and viewing angle, different perceptions emerge. As she says “Years ago, I was painting with oil paint and thinner, so that the paint material appeared uniformly matte. Little by little I was getting interested in having more substance to the paint. By adding oil to the colors I could get shinier surfaces. With just the pigment and oil I could get more nuanced surfaces that were more immediate, raw and unembellished. The negative/positive play of light on the material of the paint areas became a multi-dimensional, integral, part of the composition”. Typically made on found vintage paper, Frecon’s watercolors, in turn, take as their point of departure the unique characteristics of each leaf of paper she uses. Varying from sheet to sheet, the irregular scale, texture, and surfaces impose their own dynamic constraints upon her compositions. These works demonstrate in a different medium the artist’s continued engagement with the chromatic and sensory possibilities of painting, and of pure abstraction.

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 5-6/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central Hong Kong, Duration 23/5-30/6/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.davidzwirner.com