Åse Frid

Eat the fruit!

Åse Frid works at the intersection of image and text. Her practice is grounded in the various techniques of drawing and watercolor, often involving a meticulous process combined with an intuitive approach to colors and forms. She explores the relationship between language, image, dream, and humor, in autofiction as well as in other narratives. Often the viewer enters directly into the action without detours, yet at the same time the patient and rule-based working method allows a certain madness to emerge in the process. In a technique of her own, the text is first written with ink markers, leaving the white of the paper visible inside the hollow letters—the warp of the painting—to which Åse Frid relates both painterly and temporally. In this way, an image is slowly woven forth with the help of the brush around the text. She has worked with this way of painting and writing since 1997, when, while living in Los Angeles, she created illustrated travel letters to the King and to Iggy Pop—works based on dreams, difficult to interpret, in which they appeared. The works in the exhibition span roughly thirty years, from 1995 to 2026, and include watercolors, drawings, and paintings, documentation of performances, film and drawing installations, and photography. Influences include artists such as Tracey Emin, Raymond Pettibon, and Mike Kelley. One of her professors at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts was Stig Sjölund; it was a time when relational aesthetics encountered personal, dreamlike expressions and the forms of drawing, and when connections were forged with, among others, the American West Coast. This gave her a desire to work without diversions, with a directness in the articulation.

Malmö, Galleri Rostrum Saturday, August 30 2025: Den heliga skriften/The Holy Scripture – an exhibition together with Johan Frid (Kvarglömda skuggor). The exhibition runs until September 21, 2025.