Pia Fries. Fabelfakt: Ausst. Kat. Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, 2019

Pia Fries' paintings stand out through their direct application of paint, their delight in experimentation and the search for new, resistant formulations. Paint is the essential element here. It can represent dense masses or fluid traces but also enters into an interplay of textures, facture and repeating forms. Like the rhetorical figures of "incandescent ice" or "black snow", the title FABELFAKT also refers to a merger of contrary concepts. The antithesis of painting is graphic print. The artist brings fragments of historic prints onto her painting surface via silkscreen and reacts to the figurative play of lines with paint and painting tools. Her pictures thus fluctuate fascinatingly between representation and abstraction, between history and present.

Text: Hans Brändli, Melanie Grimm, Thomas Hettche, Felix Krämer, Thomas A. Lange, Gunda Lyken, Valentina VlaSic