Fawn Krieger: Rebus Principle, October 30th thru December 5th 2021
Photos: Mario Gallucci
1. //14, fired clay, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, acrylic sealer (concrete only), 15.5 x 11 x 6 in, 2021
2. //12, fired clay, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, 15 x 11.25 x 6 in, 2021
3. //9, fired clay, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, 9.75 x 11.5 x 2.75 in, 2021
4. //1, fired clay, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, acrylic sealer (concrete only) 5.25 x 1.5 x 7.25 in, 2021
5. //6, fired clay, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, polystyrene, 11 x 14.5 x 3.5 in, 2021
6. //18, fired clay, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, 8.5 x 7.75 x 2.5 in, 2021
7. //4, fired clay, glaze, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, polystyrene, acrylic sealer (concrete only), 10.5 x 7.5 x 2.5 in, 2021
8. // 16, fired clay, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, 19.25 x 14.75 x 3 in, 2021
9. // 15, fired clay, glaze, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, 7 x 5.5 x 2.5 in, 2021
10. // 7, fired clay, glaze, underglaze, concrete, vermiculite, pigment, acrylic sealer (concrete only), 9.25 x 9.5 x 3.25 in, 2021
Rebus Principle
This work came out of rabbit hole I went down around the construction of written language being a defining factor in what qualifies a culture as a “civilization.” I find it a violent act to define one culture as a civilization and not another, when the distinction between a written language can be simply a difference of a letter vs a picture or a sound. This injustice of what gets called a “civilization” and what doesn’t led me to think about the phenomena that accompanied written language. It was farming, which parallels and is directly linked with the birth of patriarchy. This work was born from wanting to restore language or sentences to image/pattern/form.
It is struggling with other things, too. My series that preceded it - Experiments in Resistance - imagined concrete as being a source of displacement, refusal, dispersal, and petrification. I made that series over 4 years, the Trump years. I had never worked so durationally on a project, and the endurance required to make the work raised many material and conceptual questions that I longed to continue exploring in another framework -- one in which I might borrow these same materials and structures but invert the use of concrete from one of container to one of binder. The concrete became a mortar to help attach forms to one another as opposed to isolating and severing their bonds. I set out to ask how these same materials, and the histories embedded within them, can converge, fuse, support and rely on one another to form a whole, held together, not by a frame or an ossified mass, but by/with themselves.
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Fawn Krieger is a NYC-based artist, whose multi-genre works examine how memory, rupture, and transference are embedded from the body into matter, and can be used as grounds for recovery and re-imagination. Her work has been exhibited at The Kitchen, Art in General, Nice & Fit Gallery, The Moore Space, Von Lintel Gallery, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Human Resources, Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Real Art Ways, Soloway Gallery, and Neon>fdv. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design, and her MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, NY Arts, Flash Art, BOMB, and Texte zur Kunst. She will be a 2022 residency fellow at the new Kai Art Center, in Tallinn, Estonia as well as the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation. Krieger is a 2019 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award Fellow.
LVL3 Artist of the Week Interview with Fawn Krieger
Oregon Arts Watch Viz Arts Monthly Exploratory Work in Fresh Spaces