PETER FRIE
Some Trees
January 18 - February 23, 2014
opening reception January 18, 12 - 4pm
The Tree is the starting point for Peter Fries’s exhibition Some Trees. Bushes and trees have been recurrent elements in Frie’s renowned extensive landscape paintings, but recently he has started to work in a new material turning the trees into three-dimensional portraits in the form of bronze sculptures. These are now on display for the first time at Lars Bohman Gallery. The installation with the tree bronzes is placed at the centre of the large exhibition space and invites for exploration from all angles. It occupies the whole room like an island of frozen silence.
The exhibition presents a series of new paintings, which also places the Tree in focus. The colours are more intense and powerful than before. Yet parts of the canvas are still left untouched, sometimes in spiky formations, articulating the landscapes as fragments of his memories of nature. Frie’s paintings are never explicitly populated, but hold traces of human movement and repetition in the form of tracks. These tracks one might regard as an invite to navigate the imaginary landscapes, like a person wondering about nature hopes to find the best spot in order to find the most spectacular feeling of peace and quiet.
Art always evolves from art and Fries art practice is firmly based within a long tradition. His extensive landscape paintings with grand skies are never exact depictions of nature. Rather than referring to specific sites the paintings refers to memories of landscapes. These inner, mental landscapes work in symbioses with the concrete. It is as if the works recall images from dreams once dreamt and the spectator is touched by the suggestive ambiance. The paintings radiate a meditative state within which both time and space ceases to affect. The spectator transforms into a state between dreaming and being awake. In the large, as well as in the small scale Frie totally master the atmosphere. The paintings’ embrace and engage the spectator and even though the paintings not ever are populated by people one never feels lonely before them. The works are breathing of melancholy rather than loneliness.
Lars Bohman Gallery publishes an exhibition catalogue in conjunction with the exhibition.
Peter Frie was born in 1947 in Lysekil, Sweden. He lives and works in Båstad, Sweden. His works makes part of a several collections such as in Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden, EMMA – the Modern Art Museum in Espoo, Finland, Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland, the Friesichen Museum, Leewarden, Holland and the Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, USA
