Ellie Fritz - Origins and Echos May 24th - June 30th

K Imperial Fine Art is pleased to present “Origins and Echos”, New works by artist Ellie Fritz.

Ellie Fritz is an interdisciplinary artist whose mixed media artworks employ a variety of influences, approaches, materials, and techniques. Fritz describes her work as a “dialogue between painting and printmaking. Painting introduces gesture and form, while collage imprints positive and negative space. The final stage of embossing introduces conversations between thick and thin, transparent and opaque, soft and hard, light and dark.”

Expanding on this notion of the interplay between painting and collage, Fritz sees the printing press as a tool for gesture and as an instrument for constructing and deconstructing. Collage has a unique appeal to the artist because it has an immediate and physical way of applying painterly notions of gesture in a kinesthetic fashion.

“Origins and Echos“ is more than just a name for this exhibition. It also embodies how the artist views her work and its progression through time. The show demonstrates the evolution of her practice and how different series have simultaneously influenced each other. Fritz states that this develops naturally as her practice is rooted in play, process, experimentation, and trial and error. That sense of experimentation brings about new growth and themes which mutate into new bodies of work.

For example, this exhibition features new works in color which is new territory for the artist, who has established her process with more monochromatic inclinations. Fritz was originally drawn to monochrome compositions because working in one color allowed the form to be at the forefront of the work. Color can imbue an emotional aspect into different artworks. While initially a deterrent, Fritz leaned into this and began incorporating color with earth tones and indigo. These colors have a certain ubiquity that allowed for broad emotional meaning to be applied to the pieces. This allows for new growth to emerge visually while staying true to the intentions that guided her monochromatic works.

Fritz is both an undergraduate and graduate alumni of the San Francisco Arts Institute. The school’s well-known interdisciplinary approach heavily influenced Ellie‘s creative process. While the artist originally started as a painter she became more drawn to printmaking, with its capacity for multiplicity and transferal of marks. As Ellie began to experiment more with printing and painting together, She developed a highly attuned acuity for the different materials at her disposal and how they would perform in different processes. As a result, her artworks showcase an undeniably fascinating and energized communication between marks, shapes, materials, textures, and layers.