Gloria Friedmann

11 April - 18 May 2002

This exhibition of recent works by Gloria Friedmann is divided into two parts, 'Karaoke' and 'Big Bang Parallel'.

The Karaoke paintings - ten of which are being exhibited - offer bright and vivid panels incorporating preserved tropical birds against a smooth painted backdrop which replicates their plumage. As Friedmann herself identifies, the painting mimics the bird like the bird mimics sound (giving rise to the Karaoke analogy). The Big Bang Parallel works comprise four large-scale pieces which develop Friedmann's concerns with evolution. Incorporating a preserved ape and animal bones these works become symbolic of life in the past, present and future both on Earth and beyond it.

Gloria Friedmann has been exhibiting since 1980 when she had a one-person show at the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris and was represented at the Paris Biennale. Since then she has had an extensive series of individual and group exhibitions across Europe and in the United States. From 1990 she has worked on 'tableaux vivants': living temporary installations in which animals are placed in urban environments alongside items of contemporary material culture: shopping trolleys, cars, oil drums, etc. This current exhibition - her fourth at Annely Juda Fine Art - is an exciting development of ideas presented by her previous work. Characteristically this new collection of work presents the conflict between humanity and nature with an arresting visual aesthetic - harmonising natural objects with manmade. The result is simultaneously appealing to the senses and to social awareness.
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Karaoke - Big Bang Parallel An exhibition in two parts.

A juxtaposition of works confronting

a) the art of revival in a world with flying colours
b) the art of survival for the upright primate to Mars via Earth

Karaoke Parrots, cockatoos and lories are in a natural way a world of flying colours. Natural born mimicers of sounds they can ÔkaraokeÕ the human voice. The artist often acts as copycat, thus I decided to Ôre-paintÕ their given colouration. The painting acts as a camouflage and at the same time enhances their bright plumage. Like their vivid sound it renders the bird a multicoloured homage. The portrait is now a KARAOKE painting.

Big Bang A primate ape made in Big Bang. Once he chose the upright position, started walking and talking, he was ready for genius and understanding universal attraction in becoming Isaac Newton. He becomes Stanley Miller in creating a primeval soup, enabling him to create life all by himself - and so on ... In quitting the primate period, in order to knock his head against the stars, his cradle, planet Earth, will become a giant museum. In search for a new location for mankind, settled in a new galaxy (perhaps in the year 2531) he will take the week-end off to visit the blue planet in order to check what we have done and undone. Gloria Friedmann. 02/02


click here to read Gloria Friedmann's biography