Magdalena Suarez Frimkess

Kaufmann Repetto New York is pleased to present Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’ second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1929, Saurez Frimkess spent her youth engaging in a creative education at the School of Plastic Arts. After beginning a family, she enrolled in the Catholic University in Santiago, Chile to reignite and explore her passion for painting and sculpture. In 1962, an American Fulbright professor there offered Suarez Frimkess a fellowship to study at the Clay Art Center in New York, which she accepeted. She met Michael Frimkess, who would become her partner and life-long collaborator. Despite the reception of the couple’s collaborative works, it wasn’t until 2013, at 84 years-old, that Magdalena Saurez Frimkess held her rst ever solo exhibition at South Willard, Los Angeles and her second the following year at White Columns, New York in 2014.

Her celebrated ceramic works are a unique re ection and interpretation not only of the artist’s own uncommon story but also of the social and political times through which her career has prevailed. Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’ works have been considered unconventional in her school of ceramics given their often sculptural as opposed functional forms. She selects her subject matter from her day’s activities and encounters, which she likens to selecting a dish from a menu. Her hand-painted, rather than dipped, glazed works depict varied imaginative characters and scenes selected from history and from memory, the imagery and language of which originated in areas around the world. While one vessel may portray pre-Columbian motifs, another is as likely to assume the form of Minnie Mouse donning a Prada bag or the bust of Nefertiti. It is this diversity combined with the artist’s playful poetics and humble hand that make Magdalena’s stories feel so ineffably our own.

Kaufmann Repetto will be showing a selection of drawings by Magdalena Saurez Frimkess for the rst time on the occasion of this exhibition. After suffering a minor injury to her right arm earlier in 2017, Saurez Frimkess began to challenge herself, practicing with her left arm. The series of drawings on view were thus completed.

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess (B. 1929 in Caracas, Venezuela) lives and works in Venice, California. Suarez Frimkess has had solo exhibitions with Kaufmann Repetto, Milan (2016); White Columns, New York (2014); and South Willard, Los Angeles (2015, 2013). Her two-person and group exhibitions include, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess & Ben Russell, Michael Jon & Alan, Miami (2016); The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up: Cobra And Its Legacy, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, and Looking Back, The 9th White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York (both 2015); Selected by..., Limoncello, London; Another Cats Show, 356 Mission, Los Angeles; and Made In L.A., Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (all 2014); Grapevine, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; The Cat Show, White Columns, New York; and Why is Everything the Same?, Shoot The Lobster, New York (all 2013); and South Willard, Los Angeles (2012). Forthcoming exhibitions include an exhibition at the MAK Center Shindler House this September. Magdalena Suarez Frimkess and her husband, Michael Frimkess, have exhibited their collaborative works extensively.