GW Fellow Ada Friedman opens show in Bern

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Kendra Jayne Patrick

https://mailchi.mp/gallerykendrajaynepatrick.com/winter-newsletter-10355552

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Star is the name of the artist’s cat. Cats are no joke. They are theatrical. They take us out of ourselves, and put us back in our place. They have nine lives, a keen sense of infinity, and move at seven times our speed, from where we are sitting. Their self-care rituals are a thing to behold.

Ada Friedman’s paintings thrill us. Confronted with their plain unqualified existence, we are faced with an artist’s heroic yet humble project: Let Abstraction face Nature. Hone in on the “zero” of painting, knowing it will remain undiscovered, a Grenzbegriff.

Ada Friedman’s paintings are calendars from out of time. Meticulous records of the freedom to create, move and be still. They often take years to complete (in this show, the three principal works are each 3-4 years in the making). No process is central, but Ostranenje and defamilarisation function as a means of connection, of renewing perception. Making things strange, but substantial. This takes time.

There is much tenderness here, about what will forever stay hidden and yet remains in play. One side of the painting is hidden from the other. Layers of subtle hues, covering notes to self and other details. A chronicle of meticulous plans, their abandonment or fulfillment; many stories told. Geometric rules subverted with a light touch. An exacting shade of brown, across a can lid and the underlying scrap of jean fabric, itself bonded to silken paper and this in turn to sheets of polymers, mirrored or transparent.

“Painting is loss,” Ada will say.

What is painting as such? Pure colour radiates in contradiction to the sediments of history. Referent hangs with referent, signs exchange signals. Malevich, minus the irony, but funny. The cat looks back at you across the unspeakable void, ready to cuddle.

Ada Friedman
b. Washington, D.C., 1984
Lives and works in the Texas Hill Country & Brooklyn, NY

Ada Friedman’s art is rooted in paint, routine, and ritual. Her paintings exist in different fields of action and poetry; of varying spaces of concreteness, collaboration, and interiority. Works are typically double-sided; each side contains a painting unto itself which combines with its verso into a multifaceted whole. Moved by the artist’s holistic drive to conjure worlds, her approach to the medium transforms paper - her prima materia - and discreet collections of idiosyncratic materials into symphonic accord for adventurous, graceful paintings.

She has recently been awarded the Grant Wood fellowship and a Visiting Professorship in Painting and Drawing at the University of Iowa, 2025-26, and she was also recently appointed Visiting Artist in Painting and Drawing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2021-22. She has participated in institutional exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zürich (Zürich, Switzerland); University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA); Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, USA); and The University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, TN.

Her work is featured currently in a group exhibition, September, at Shore Gallery in Vienna, curated by Kunsthalle Zürich curator Otto Bonnen. The show is part of the city of Vienna's noted, sixteenth annual 'Curated By' art gallery festival.

She and her work have been featured in BOMB magazine, Brooklyn Rail, Family Time, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, Painter’s Bread, BMore Art, and more. Friedman’s artist book, Drawing Hilma Af Klint, made in collaboration with artists Ariel Dill and Denise Schatz, was published by Miniature Garden (2014; second edition 2019). She has had recent solo exhibitions at exhibitions at Kendra Jayne Patrick (Bern, CH) and David Peter Francis (New York City, USA), and has been included in group exhibitions at Nature of Things (Dallas, TX) Cleopatra’s (Brooklyn, USA); Safe Gallery (Brooklyn, USA); Ortega y Gasset (Brooklyn, USA); Grifter (New York City, USA); White Columns (New York City, USA); Night Gallery (Los Angeles, USA), among others. She presented a solo presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2023, an acclaimed two-person presentation at Independent 2025, and was featured in The Living Room, a special curated selection of art and artists at Art Genève 2023.

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