Some Things Have Meaning, Others Don't

Marfa Contemporary presents Zipora Fried's Some Things Have Meaning, Others Don't, opening Friday, October 9 during Chinati Weekend in Marfa, Texas. In addition to an opening reception, a book signing and curatorial walk-through will be held Sunday, October 11.

The sculptures, drawings and video comprising Fried's Some Things Have Meaning, Others Don't appear in cycles of ebb and flow. Shadows give way to lustrous surfaces, buoyantly recognizable references become submerged in illogical arrangements, and restrained techniques generate a surfeit of reduplicated marks.

In oceanic and nocturnal color palettes, six minimalist drawings cross the wall while another cascades from the ceiling. They are covered in rows upon rows of compact vertical lines, each an index of the artist's laborious process. Similarly, the video slices a seascape into rows that seem like horizons but are ultimately disorienting. Watery mountains, ominous clouds and shifting rays of light drift through this unstable environment. As with paintings of the sublime, occasionally we see a figure overwhelmed. 

Fried's sculptures attach briery found objects, such as shells and baseball bats, to smooth furniture parts. Evoking both the brutal austerity of the desert and the psychological excess of deep sea metaphors, these works feel alive or lived with, yet are designed against the logic of utility. Inversely, her gilded benches provide seats for visitors while calling to mind Donald Judd's boxy foray into "actual space." Seen in aggregate, Some Things Have Meaning, Others Don't forms a vista that refracts the geography and recent cultural landmarks of Marfa, Texas.

Curated by Sophie Landres.