Biography
For Frize, the basic elements of painting (paint, brush, canvas), alongside its sensual and intellectual pursuits, are sublimated according to a pre-determined methodology, and are ultimately concealed by the process of its making.
Bernard Frize was born in 1949 in Saint-Mandé, France. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany. For the past 45 years Frize has developed a singular practice that has continuously questioned the role of the artist and the act of painting itself. By working serially, and according to restrictive measures and protocols, Frize has released himself from subjectivity and allowed a self-generative framework to take shape and evolve over time, from one series to the next.
His work belongs to a conceptual tradition in which painting is thought out before it is made. Inheriting conceptual art, he extends the logic by subjecting the act of painting to strict protocols: planning, instructions, categorization. The canvas becomes a field of mental experimentation where each series explores the methodical depletion of a principle. The division of the pictorial surface into rational modules abolishes any formal hierarchy, and color without predominance is treated as neutral data, at the system's service. The process is designed to distance the artist who partly delegates the production process, accentuating the work's depersonalization. Yet within this apparent control, chance interferes: drips, accidents and overflows testify to a fertile tension between predetermination and contingency. Frize's painting subtly questions the very possibility of expression within a constrained framework. It is a machine for thinking about painting, rather than representing it.
Solo exhibitions of Frize’s work have been organized by many institutions, including Sans Repentir, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (2019); This is a Bridge, Fondaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal (2015); Bernard Frize- Günter Umberg, Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint Louis, France (2015); And How and Where and Who, Morsbroich Museum, Leverkusen, Germany (2010); Fat Paintings, Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark (2007); S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium (2002), amongst many others. Frize has been the recipient of the Kathe-Kollwitz Prize, Germany (2015), the Fred Thieler Prize for Painting, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany (2011) the DAAD, Berlin, Germany (1993) and the Villa Medici, Rome, Italy (1984). His work is in numerous public collections worldwide, including at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; MUDAM, Luxembourg; Tate Modern, London, UK; MUMOK, Vienna, Austria; MOCA, Los Angeles, USA; Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany and SMAK, Ghent, Belgium.
For Frize, the basic elements of painting (paint, brush, canvas), alongside its sensual and intellectual pursuits, are sublimated according to a pre-determined methodology, and are ultimately concealed by the process of its making.
Selected Works
Exhibitions
Bernard Frize
Shadows, Spirits and Clouds
Bernard Frize
Marian Goodman Gallery's artist-centric newsletter delves deeply into one artist on the MGG roster at a time. Emerging as an artist in the 1970s, an era shaped by conceptual and politically engaged art, Frize embraced painting as a form of labor, likening it to craftsmanship. Rejecting emotional expression or personal invention, he chose to focus instead on the physical act of creation.
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