Pia Fries

In her work, Pia Fries (1955, Switzerland) employs paint not only as an optic medium but also a tactical one: she scrapes and molds the paint with palette knife, rake or comb into sculptural forms. While painting, Fries simultaneously builds up her subject matter and material. Pia Fries uses both photography and sieve printing on a white background beside, and beneath, mounds of oil paint that has been piled, scraped and then smeared into position. These generously-applied layers of oil paint lend the work a layered, almost sculptural, landscape quality.