Katrin Fridriks: Flying Awareness at Lazarides

9^th July 2014

Shelby Paddison

Shelby Paddison

9 July 2014

Staring into a Katrin Fridriks painting is like staring into the universe: expansive, absorbing, and a little bit frightening. With thick, sweeping acrylic on broad canvas, Fridriks has returned to the expressionism scene with her new explosive collection Flying Awareness. With over 15 works on display, this exhibition promises to be fun and flirty, and with spirited, glossy colours igniting the room, you’ll be sure to leave with a taste of the extraordinary.

A particularly interesting piece is Fly – Zone, a set of nine circular canvases, equally spaced and sized. These pieces – strongly representing the appearance of planets – are bound in a straight line on black plexi sticks to create a sense of unity. Each tells a different story, with the centrepiece only holding monochrome colours, while the four either side vary from volcanic reds to moist, earthy greens.

Throughout the collection we witness a variety of control in the brushwork. Some pieces boast large, symmetrical strokes of vibrant yellows, while others use contrasting greys and oranges to create a sense of modern disjuncture. The grey matter that sits in the centre, particularly in Flying Awareness 2, is much more detailed than the thick acrylic colours that fly behind it. On closer inspection, the seemingly random strokes actually resemble veins, bringing the painting to life and giving it a physical pulse in the room (also assisted by the paintings being three-dimensional). Reflected Mind and Madness also achieves this effect: a more sparse piece, this one is framed by a black canvas. Fridriks creates an abstract shape of a human heart with a distinctive splash of blood red towards the top, followed by small orderly detonations of colours, reflecting emotion where it sits alone on the wall.

The exhibition room is very effective in its presentation of the paintings, with reflective silver flooring and eerie instrumental music creating a very futuristic atmosphere. A television screen at the back of the room shows a short film of a remote-controlled hovercraft inside the exhibition, pausing at each painting to observe it, before silently flying over to the next.

While Fridriks’ artwork most certainly tells a story, it’s hard not to find the same story in each individual piece. An overall success, repeated throughout the collection in a violent shattering of colour.

Shelby Paddison

Katrin Fridriks: Flying Awareness is at Lazarides from 27^th June until 24^th July 2014. For further information visit the gallery’s website here.