Noire Gallery announces a new chapter of the NOIRE CHAPEL series with Pia Fries in the evocative Cappella Noire of San Sebastiano, a space that embodies the artistic tradition of the gallery. The chapel, enhanced by Sol LeWitt’s wall frescoes (Wall Drawing #137, a double intervention: 1st wall – not straight horizontal lines that do not touch; 2nd wall – not straight vertical lines that do not touch, presented at Documenta 5 curated by Harald Szeemann, Kassel, 1972), hosts projects by international artists. The space becomes the ideal setting for a dialogue between two distinct yet related languages: on one side LeWitt’s rigorous conceptual structures, on the other the dynamic and vital flows of Fries’ painting. In Pia Fries’ works, a former student of Gerhard Richter, color and movement intertwine in compositions free from traditional frameworks, capable of opening paths and traces in constant transformation. Her bold and personal pictorial language stages colors, forms, and structures as fragments of an inner order, free from conventional schemes and values. Each work follows its own logic: immediate to the eye yet at the same time enigmatic. Her painting unfolds as a flow in continuous transformation: overlapping, blending, opening paths and traces that emerge from empty spaces. If, on one hand, the essential signs of the American artist evoke order and discipline, on the other, Fries’ chromatic and gestural flows generate movement, traces, and transformations. The encounter between these two opposing yet complementary visions offers a visual experience in which rigor and freedom find a new balance.
San Sebastiano,
Torino, Italy
