PRESS RELEASE

Zoe Friedman A Place in Time | November 29 – January 5, 2019

Opening reception: Thursday, November 29, 6-8 pm

Modella Art Gallery is pleased to present A Place in Time, an exhibition of recent and new work by Zoe Friedman, curated by Cassidy Petrazzi.

Through the mediums of collage, hand-drawn stop-motion animation, prints, sound, and sculpture, Friedman directly engages the viewer’s holistic body through immersive installation. Friedman’s work explores the wild and domestic, the strange and familiar, uniting faraway places with the objects that surround us in our daily life. Through collage and domestic, the strange and familiar, and ornamental design, Friedman’s lighthearted and intricate work evoke moments that center the mind on the beauty of nature and our connection to it. Animals and fauna are a prominent theme in her work, inhabiting imagined landscapes and kaleidoscopic environments.

A Place in Time showcases several recent works including a new two-channel video work titled, Idle Hour(2018). The piece is a collaged narrative of layered time and place made by combining photographs with paper cut-outs and hand-drawn imagery, enlivened through rhythmic sequence and repetition. At times the two-channels create a single panorama, at other points they mirror one another or show different perspectives entirely. The shifting viewpoints, as well as the movement between cut-outs and realistic photographic imagery, blurs the boundaries between flat and three-dimensional space and real or illusory landscapes.

Also exhibited is a suite of five works by the artist titled, Primavera I-V(2013). The works are large scale hand-cut panels based off the canonical work of the same name painted by Sandro Botticelli in 1482. Botticelli’s work is broken down by Friedman into five sections, each corresponding to their own panel, which depict the allegory of spring. The panels, which can be hung in front of a window or along a wall, cast shadows of the garden and graceful dancing figures. Shadows and light are an integral part of Friedman’s work, as the light changes throughout the day, Primavera, along with a selection of hanging mobiles seen throughout the space, cast shadows and meander across the walls and floor—they are dynamic works that engage time, light, and space.

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Zoe Friedman earned her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA in 2012. She is a recipient of the Henry Walters Traveling Fellowship (2012), and a Fulbright ETA Fellowship to Malaysia (2007). She has exhibited her work in solo shows across the country in Baltimore, Maryland, Washington DC, Oakland, California, Arlington Virginia, and Brooklyn, New York. In 2019 she will complete a large permanent installation in the Enoch Pratt Public Library in Baltimore, and she has an upcoming solo exhibition in Copenhagen Denmark. Friedman teaches art at Towson University in Maryland.