Windhand Laufbein, the eponymous title of the artist’s book accompanying the exhibition, introduces Pia Fries´new group of works.

The sophisticated design consists of two brochures – one for the paintings and works on paper, the other for thoughts on Fries’s new works in the form of a typescript written by the young writer and artist, Lisa Kränzler (born in 1983 in Ravensburg, lives and works in Karlsruhe).

Pia Fries (born in 1955 in Beromünster, Switzerland; lives and works in Düsseldorf) received the Art Award of the City of Lucerne in 2014. For over thirty years, she has given single-minded attention to studying the interplay between line and colour in her painting. Windhand Laufbein, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper, is on view at Kunstplattform akku in Emmenbrücke / Luzern. In this first presentation of a new suite of works, the artist has created striking imagery by combining raw paint with silkscreening. The prints show much enlarged visual fragments taken from a famous series of copperplate engravings of four mythological figures in freefall by Hendrick Goltzius (1558 – 1617). Goltzius has captured The Four Disgracers, Tantalus, Icarus, Phaeton and Ixion, in the act of fighting gravity as they tumble down to earth. The feeling of weightlessness and the loss of orientation that marks their fall is heightened by the sweep and motion of the painterly gesture. The colouring, especially the material substance of the paint, defines the rhythm; it is agitated, plays with emptiness, stillness and opulence, embodies stringency and playfulness, and oscillates between compactness and openness.

Language: German