Skylight and Spectra
The images below were taken while in attendance at the opening reception for the exhibition of artist and professor, Dianna Frid. Her work is on view at the neuekunstforum in Cologne. I have included the press release:
The exhibition skylight and spectra is Dianna Fridʼs response to the daylight that enters the neues kunstforum: a 400 square meter space with floor to ceiling windows on the south and north sides, and with a ceiling skylight that spans its 40 meter length. During sunlit days, light traverses the atrium of the building and makes an ephemeral inscription on the walls and tiles. Fridʼs project harnesses this light and provokes its physical refraction by applying reflective materials on the floor. The project also instigates thematic associations with how light and other phenomena are described through imagery and diagrams.
A drawing spans a large portion of the floor area. It is made with a variety of reflective color strips that are loosely arranged in the spectrum of the rainbow, the color of visible light. In this case, Frid uses an expansive definition of drawing: one that acknowledges the spatial and inter-material extension of linear elements. The regular size of the tiles in the exhibition space is used to structure the drawing. Inter-woven lines applied to the pre-existing grid generate patterns on the floor that result in star shapes and other basic forms. Depending on the viewerʼs location, different shapes can be discerned within the pattern and color gradation of the floor drawing. Changes in the piece are also triggered by the movement of natural light throughout the day and by shifting weather conditions. Two and three-dimensional objects are integrated into the floor space or placed on adjacent walls or windows. These are meant to further cast the neues kunstforum space as a conceptually allusive vessel within which the phenomena of light is investigated.
Dianna Frid was born in Mexico City in 1967. She migrated with her family to Vancouver (Canada) in 1983, and currently lives in Chicago (US) where she teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Frid is known for making objects and images that span a wide range of scales and materials. Her works take the intimate form of artist books and collages, or they function as large sculptures, drawings or as immersive environments.
One of the central themes of her recent work has been the relationship between diagrams, patterns and words and the things that these diagrams, patterns and words attempt to depict. She often uses recognizable schemata of buildings, of architectural components or of natural phenomena as points of departure that yield reconfigured objects and images. Frid arrives at these reconfigurations by combining disparate elements that include plaster, tape, colored pencils, cloth, paint, foil, cardboard and embroidery thread. The resulting works play off the collisions that arise from diverse materials. Fridʼs sculptural objects and large drawings are presented within architectural spaces that elicit a particular response or arrangement. In this way, her larger works address the spaces that house them as sites for charged spatial, material and object relationships. This is the case in skylight and spectra at neues kunstforum in Cologne – Dianna Fridʼs first solo show in Germany.
Dianna Frid has written of her work:
I see my works as inquiries into the tensions that exist between the tools with which the world is described and the world that may exist in spite of these tools. These tensions evoke other possible ways of encompassing things and images: ways that include the intricacies of desire, contradiction, allegory, and attention to form and sense experience.
Dianna Frid has and continues to influence who I am as a student and artist. She had a strong, insightful voice towards my decision to take on the arduous and often difficult journey of a so-called artist. I owe many thanks to her and wish her great success. It was great fun to experience this moment with her in Cologne.
