Pia Fries is a painter who approaches her work with care and conviction in a decidedly classical sense. She conceives her pieces with structure, seriousness, and finesse, while also demonstrating a keen sense of colors and shapes, along with a well-balanced blend of controlled purism and ecstatic energy. Pia Fries places great emphasis on proportion and rhythm, seeking harmony and simultaneous disharmony in her compositions. Her paintings are conceptual but not “conceptual art,” and they are abstract but not “abstract art” in the traditional sense, as she develops her subjects revolving around themes of color, composition, and expressiveness from representational contexts.

Her artworks possess multiple layers of meaning, revealing intricate references within their content. Pia Fries harbors a passion for metamorphosis, finding pleasure in disassembling and reassembling highly complex visual elements.

Text: Valentina Vlasic, Kuratorin, Museum Kurhaus Kleve