Text by Richard Shiff

The result of a deliberative process guided by careful attention to spatial relationships, Suzan Frecon’s large-scale oil paintings are composed of asymmetrical curves that result in minor and major measured areas of color. 

Accompanying the artist’s solo exhibitions at David Zwirner, New York and London, in 2017, this publication features a selection of new monumental paintings carefully reproduced both as individual works and in installation views to best convey the experience of seeing the work. Depending on the viewer’s position and the time of day, the contrasts of matte and sheen, positive and negative, and immediacy and radiance combine to create an ongoing visual experience of always varying subtleties. 

In contrast to the paintings, Frecon’s watercolors, also featured here, engage the relationship between paint and paper support. Each predetermined sheet—often from an agate-burnished old Indian ledger page—has its own innate character, properties, and irregular shape; its creases, holes, blemishes, and even faint writings become an integral component of the final watercolor. 

“Their truth is the paint,” Frecon says, and in a specially commissioned essay acclaimed art historian Richard Shiff examines the new body of work in relationship to painting and the experience of looking.