Kendra Jayne Patrick

You are cordially invited to the opening of Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick's first permanent exhibition space on Friday, October 7th, 2022 in Bern, Switzerland. We will open with a suite of paintings by Ada Friedman.
Ada Friedman
Paintings in Pisces
7 October - 17 December 2022
Vernissage: 7 October 17:00-23:00


Listen. I know that internet/youth culture is all about the woowoo at the moment. Witchery, manifesting, reality shifting, tarot, horoscopes are everywhere, seeming to provide mass respite from crumbling political and climate realities the world over. But! Ada Friedman’s Painting in Pisces is a dreamlike exhibition, wherein the fluidity and ritual for which her sign is known combine into thoroughly considered, agile paintings. So, I want to have some fun musing about attitude-as-cosmic assignment versus attitude-as-aesthetic-posture, as a means of parsing her dense and subtle works.


Friedman’s sign is said to be mutable and shape-shifting, represented by a wandering fish. Those born under Pisces are said to be highly sensitive, very present in any given environment without melting into it. Friedman’s paintings are double-sided, each one living on the reverse of another. Their shapes are irregular and incongruent, while they are anatomical relatives. Here, you’ll see pieces from a body of paintings all shaped like relaxing isosceles triangles. And although they are composed in similar form, height, and width, they are entirely distinct from one another. In terms of color, works sharing one of Friedman’s odd structures might seem to be complete strangers meeting for the first time. Yet an inextricable physical relationship with the painting on its backside (frontside? topside? underbelly?) harmonizes the full work by forcing chance interactions and compatibilities between the two. Her works are firm in their adaptability. Repetitive in a refusing way. Fish flip, decisions are final/reversible, light shimmers.


The condition of fish, incidentally, is also William James’ preferred metaphor** for the use and misuses of abstraction. A misused abstraction is one imposed upon the world. A point of view inconsiderate of finer, relevant aspects of a thing for the sake of ease or control; a harmful distortion of reality. Useful abstraction, however, is in line with its originary sensibility: a verb describing the attempt to make the unfathomable ingestible, yes, but by way of curiosity rather than knowing. An attempt to understand rather than expound. Like a good tarot reading.


In service to this end, Ada’s prima materia is paper, for its broad range of use. Yet the artist also fully integrates intermittently collected and discreetly organized materials into a painting’s whole. These items tend to be fragile and/or translucent, demanding delicate, intentional handling. Importantly, Friedman does not adhere them to already-painted surfaces; these works are not collages. Instead, lighting gel or a found doily serve as integral structural components of the entire plane on which any two paintings live, further coordinating works which share all of their material elements to differently composed ends. They swim together, wherever and however they want. Friedman manipulates each component with precisely the same physical gestures she uses to oil paint, resulting in unified, motley, elegant paintings.


Kendra Jayne Patrick
Schanzeneckstrasse 3
3012, Bern Switzerland
Photo: Cary Whittier


**Now let the water represent the world of sensible facts, and let the air above it represent the world of abstract ideas…. We are like fishes swimming in the sea of sense, bounded above by the superior element, but unable to breathe it pure or penetrate it. We get our oxygen from it, however, we touch it incessantly, … in this part, now in that, and every time we touch it, we are reflected back into the water with our course redetermined and reenergized. The abstract ideas of which the air consists are indispensable for life, but irrespirable by themselves, as it were, and only active in their redirecting function.


William James. "The One and the Many". Lecture 4 in Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking. New York: Longman Green and Co (1907): 49-63.

I'm giving an ARTIST TALK in person Thurs. 4/7/22 @ 7:30 pm @ UT's School of Art in room 109. To join via Zoom & for more info, register/go here -- tiny.utk.edu/amanda_friedman

Images: (Left) Amanda Friedman, Untitled (Studio Guardian Tree #6), 2022, India ink, gauche, colored pencil, and graphite on paper

(Right) Lynne Marinelli Ghenov, (Detail) Window 2 - wild goose chase - so utterly under the surface of the river, 2022, graphite, colored pencil, and India ink on paper

A Rose Goes features works by Amanda Friedman and Lynne Marinelli Ghenov in conversation with works from the Ewing Gallery Permanent Collection.

Friedman and Ghenov are comfortable with ghosts in the studio. Ghenov uses family ledgers and documents found while cleaning out her childhood home. Friedman combines unexpected materials such as crayons, reference book photocopies, and lighting gels. Both artists use the act of drawing to try to capture the present moment, while their materials are envoys of the past. These technical and physical modes of working underscore their mutual interest in the foggy lines between different chapters in a human lifetime and realms of presence.

As Friedman and Ghenov simultaneously tease out and further obscure the boundaries between past and present, drawing and accumulated materials, their work is put into conversation with artists from the University of Tennessee’s permanent collection such as Joseph Delaney, Claes Oldenburg, Mira Schor, and Nancy Spero. The dialogue that ensues explores the blurred lines between drawing as practice and performance, between studies and finished works, and between art-making and living.

In conjunction with this exhibition, an artist book catalog (published by the Ewing Gallery and the Fire Escape Cafe) will be released at an event Friday, April 22 at 6-8 pm at the UT Downtown Gallery.

Freewheeling interviews with contemporary artists about their processes and inspirations. Hosted by artist Jennifer Sullivan.

Check out other great artist interviews in the "It's a Process" series on Jen's site here or on the show's Apple Podcast link!

NADA House at Governors Island
Turn Onz, Detroit
5/8 - 8/1/2021 

Everyday Drawings and Pyramids at Grifter

75 East Broadway, Unit 221 NY, NY

9/11- 10/31/20

Cloud Memories
Curated by Adrianne Rubenstein
White Columns Online
Online, 3/23 - 4/23/20

Exhibition on the White Columns website, here!

Lazzis and Two One Acts 
at All Saints Church
230 E60th St. NY, NY
7 PM 12/14/19

Lazzis and Two Acts, a revue produced by Vivien Theatre Video, the cooperative experimental theatre company I recently founded with Irina Jasnowski Pascual, Tyler Berrier, David Kirshoff, and Josh Brand will be staged at All Saints Church on Sat. Dec 14th. The night hinges together: a surgical theatre opera (Irina and Tyler), lazzis puppetry fashion show (David), videos (Josh), and my new play, Helen Rides V. My piece is built around/makes a world for the ceramic light castle towers/paintings I've been making. Estimated runtime, an hour 15min.
Please see below for a series of posters for the evening. 

Family Show
at Safe Gallery

1004 Metropolitan Ave.
Brooklyn, NY
10/11 - 12/15/19

Safe Gallery presents:
The Burn Show
Curated by Blair Blumberg & Jonny Campolo
Folly Tree Arboretum
741 Springs Fireplace Rd.
East Hampton, NY
7/20/19 

Artist Talk
w/ other UArk artists-in-residence Dan Gunn & Adam Milner 
6 PM 6/13/19
Pryor Center
Fayetteville, AR

Summer Residency
at the University of Arkansas 

I am an artist-in-residence at the Clay Break residency in the Ceramics Dept. at UArk, June-July 2019. 

Helen Rides IV