The Good Luck Gallery is proud to present:
ANDREW FRIEDER
(1959 – 2014)
July 18 – August 29, 2015
Reception: July 18, 7-10PM

In the work of Andrew Frieder (1959-2014), figures struggle with each other and themselves: A dead-eyed nun prepares to kill a snake with a rock, a demon restrains the strings of an archer’s bow, a naked man communes with a skull. These depictions of serpents, phantoms, sexual grotesques and hybrid beasts – often drawn from classical mythology and the Old Testament scriptures that Frieder was so conversant with – are playful but menacing and carry a highly-charged psychological weight. A gentle and subtle coloration of soft pastel and muted earth tones distinguishes the work, which is sometimes scrawled upon with text, and frequently pierced, perforated, sewn, glued and otherwise driven into aesthetic submission, resulting in a strangely harmonious combination of the visceral and the meticulous.

When Frieder’s work appeared at this year’s Outsider Art Fair in New York, it was the first time it had been shown outside Lancaster, the town on the western edge of the Mojave Desert where Frieder spent his most productive years as an artist, working day and night for several decades, and producing a vast body of work in a variety of mediums. A fragile but driven talent, Frieder never sought attention; in fact he willfully avoided it, and it was only after his death that the full range of his output was discovered. Alongside a massive archive of artwork, Frieder’s legacy includes many written accounts that exhibit an acute awareness of his own work and mental state, as well as rigorous and compassionate essays on history and religion; he cared deeply about political injustice and ruminated on his creative process as painstakingly as any professional artist.

As a teenager, Frieder was a nationally ranked fencer but abandoned the sport as he gave himself over to art. He struggled with schizophrenia for most of his adult life, and in the chaos of his illness he destroyed his entire body of work three times, as well as a number of finished novels.

Throughout his last two decades, however, he experienced no episodes or hospitalizations – a healing process facilitated in no small part by deep immersion in his art.

The Good Luck Gallery, who represent the artist’s estate, is honored to be the venue for his first solo show in Los Angeles.