Suzan Frecon

For her seventh solo presentation with David Zwirner, Suzan Frecon unveils new paintings that encapsulate the richly textured, minimalist aesthetic for which she is known. Aptly dubbed "oil paintings"—a designation that is deliberately stylized in lowercase, as are the titles of her artworks and most past shows—the exhibition contains nine oil-on-linen compositions, each of which displays various configurations of semi-circles and ovoid shapes on monochromatic backgrounds.

Frecon's work must be viewed in person to fully grasp the conceptual dimensions of her practice, which revolves around "the durational activity of painting itself and invites the viewer's sustained attention: these, she says, 'are not pictures that you look at. They are paintings that you experience.'"

Below, an excerpt from the artist's biography offers additional insight:

In the artist's hands, color assumes a tactile quality, appearing almost material: Frecon develops her own color palette derived from pigments ground in oil, altering the quantities in order to obtain varying degrees of matte and sheen, surface and depth. She explains, "Color is the generator of the painting....I gravitate toward more natural colors rather than synthetic or artificial ones because they are what I feel what I want to convey....I think of the word 'innate' which perhaps means 'within nature.' I like the word 'innate' regarding color because I do try to have dimension within the color so that it is more than one color."