Bernard Frize
14 December 2002 – 9 March 2003
www.gemeentemuseum.com
The French painter Bernard Frize presents problems for curators. He works in series. Each series of works employs a different methodology. Don’t expect stylistic coherence; it’s an inimitable and idiosyncratic oeuvre. Frize devises simple operating instructions – absurdist, arbitrary manoeuvres – to generate a painting. In one series each work is constructed from the dried paint membranes that form in pots of paint left to the air. They cover the entire surface of the canvas. In another, Frize creates a bespoke brush from several smaller brushes, each dipped into a different, randomly chosen pigment. This single brushstroke meanders across the canvas until the surface is filled, the pigment fading as it goes. Each work reveals something of the methodology underpinning its manufacture.
Bernard Frize at Gemeentemuseum is a survey
show with an emphasis on recent work, though there are paintings stretching
back as far as the late 1980s. The show is more cohesive than one might
expect. The earlier works only hint at the contrasts inherent in his
practice. The show neither contains the epic, superlative single-brushstroke
paintings nor the smaller curios that might have helped punctuate a more
representative retrospective. What there is, however, and this is a
substantial show, remains first rate.
Many of the recent paintings here include simple patterning devices.
Eventuellement (1998) is a looping chevron, Session (1999) adopts a
herringbone motif, Romani (2002) a ziggurat. The brushstrokes are painted
directly onto a wet resin. The paint bleeds out of control. The effect of
chance and contingency is important. The work is completed in one sitting
and appears to demand several hands, working simultaneously, to complete.
Frize claims he wishes to rid the ego from his practice and he abdicates responsibility for the work to the process. The act of painting becomes an automated activity dictated by the idea. They could be taken for conceptual pranks were it not for the fact that they interrogate the very foundations of the practice of painting. What’s more, his paintings, for all the wit and the calculated happenstance are beautiful. The paradox is glaring, and telling. Frize is simply one of the finest painters working today.
Brendan Fletcher