Bernard FrizeA Labor of Love
Current Exhibition
INTRODUCTIONLuisa Ziaja
Chief Curator Belvedere
Chief Curator Belvedere
Grünangergasse 1
1010 Vienna
29 Apr – 28 Jun 2025
read inGerman
Exhibition postponed!
read inGerman
Bernard Frize’s works express a radical distrust of authorship in the traditional sense, as well as a continuous questioning of painterly intention. Frize does not act as an expressive authority, but rather as a co-ordinator of processes which, to a certain extent, occur outside of subjective control. Painterly decisions are deliberately delegated to systemic, procedural, or even technical parameters. In their appearance and genesis, his paintings elude any finalistic gesture. Instead, they stand for a practice of inconclusive propositions, of openness to chance and disruption, but also of calculated repetition. It is this tension between the mechanistic and the imponderable, between structure and contingency, that charges Bernard Frize’s paintings with their distinctive energy. His work cannot be reduced to a single ‘style’; rather, it is a continuous experimentation with the question of what painting – as an activity and a pictorial form – is still able to be, without recourse to expressive authenticity. Central to this is the concept of ‘matter matters’, which refers both to the material as such and to the material conditionality of all meaning. In Frize’s work, colour is not a carrier of symbolic meaning; instead, it is an agent acting autonomously, as it were. It flows, overlays, runs dry, reaches limits – often channelled by the form of a grid or machine-like repetition. The visual consequence is an aesthetic of non-decision which, in formal terms, appears highly precise nonetheless. The relationship between the image and the viewer is not structured by the offer of a narrative or iconic reading, but by the physical experience of rhythm, density, and repetition within the colour field. His most recent works are characterised by a more pronounced incorporation of structured colour gradients created by the systematic overlaying of horizontal and vertical brushstrokes. The painted surface is neatly segmented while the individual fields engage in a visual tension through the vibrancy of their colours, the translucence and the directional orientation. The repeated movement of the brush does not create mere reproduction, but a calculated difference – a principle that reflects the oscillation between control and coincidence. In technical terms, Bernard Frize remains true to his practice of combining acrylic paints with synthetic resin. It is a technique that not only yields a particularly smooth and reflective surface, but also enhances the materiality of the paint itself. While the application of that paint appears mechanically precise, it is never completely free of irregularities – a tension that runs through Frize’s entire body of work as a conceptual leitmotif. The production process is therefore not obscured, but exposed, with the role of the artist being more that of an operator than of an expressive creator. Indeed, Frize’s recent works also address questions of perception. They call for an active reception on the part of the viewer, a closer and more precise scrutiny, an engagement with subtle differences. On prolonged viewing, the supposed rigour of the compositions dissolves into vibrant colour modulations and rhythmic structures. Thus, in repetition, the Other unfolds – a poetic dimension that does not preclude an analytical approach; rather, it deepens it. Bernard Frize’s oeuvre therefore elicits a way of thinking beyond the binary oppositions of content and form, subject and process, meaning and material. It remains a work in progress – open, porous, and recalcitrant. In the formal coolness lies the very possibility of a new way of thinking about the potential of painting in times of algorithmic control and visual supersaturation. In a sense, Frize anticipated early on the transformation of images in the age of the digital revolution and has consistently incorporated it into his work. His paintings are created on the basis of rules, not intuition, under conditions that evoke operation rather than expression. His methods might be described as ‘operational aesthetics’, a term now increasingly important in the context of post-digital art production. In this respect, the aesthetics of Bernard Frize’s works are algorithmic – but in a conceptual sense, rather than a digital one.
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Photo
- Markus Wörgötter
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