Exhibitions — Gillian Frise

Upcoming Exhibition

Pictorial Coherence Group Show in NYC at Van Der Plas Gallery, I56 Orchard St. OPening MArch 29th and running til April 7th

Past Exhibitions

Venus de Hi-Lo art performance

Group show, “Apophenia Zephyr” at Drey Gallery new west location 24 Mercer St.

Collaborated with Christine Pountney, Plant Seedf Flowers, Sydney Erin Kowel to create *The Venus de Hi-Lo*.

It’s a play on the Venus de Milo. And how Venus is depicted and how she is one of the rare celestial female archetypes, apart from the moon. And how she gets depicted. And how femininity over the years has been depicted but what it costs women also to be the symbols of fertility and abundance and nurturing. What it costs women and the earth to be those things. To take a flower and leave a wound. And then Gillian and I love a little sass and comedy too. So the idea of it being irreverent. High art and absurdist, disruptive art. Nudity. Playing with Botticelli’s classical masterpiece. Subverting it. Thus the purse IV which is no longer there. The antique lamp stand. The wigs. The cardboard shell. The cardboard signs. Having people think about what it costs women to be deflowered. What it means to pluck a flower. What it felt like to be deflowered. How universal it is. How everyone gets deflowered. What is its impact. What gets lost? What is gained? Paradise Lost. Paradise Regained. Text by Christine Pountney

Also showing works by Eldon Garnet, Heather Goodchild, Hannah Epstein, Mat Brown, Hannah Faas, Laurie Skantos, Alisa Mcronald, Kanin Weaver, Nicholas Degenova Stephanie Cormier.

Toronto Art Fair

Toronto Art Fair with Drey Gallery | Metro Toronto Art Convention Centre | October 26-29th, 2023

Gillian Frise is a Toronto-based artist who explores the sensuality of nature through sculpture, drawing, painting, performance and video. Her work depicts the blurred borders between bodies, our immersion in the animal menagerie, and the physical transformations that are only made possible through art.

Of her paintings, she says, “I paint through the body, and dream my work from my hands. Lusts and fears are hinged on moments and this is what comes through. I paint to take myself apart and put myself together from a softer more animal loving place. I want to explore the divides and how to cross them. Make inventions and appear in dreams. “

THE ORIGINAL MOTHER, SHE IS YOU

MAY 26-28TH, 2023 | PMC ARTSCAPE WYCHOOD BARNS | 601 Christie St | Toronto

I want to appear in dreams. Direct communication. I heard it helps circulation.

I want to do tit offerings. And feel the sun. Tit to sun. Direct light.

Do you know how to hold a body? How to soften a cloth. Live in her body. Lather her body. Know her danger. Know her.

Barrier cream is how to not get bed sores.

Do my thighs offer lushy rides? Down to the sea?

When hands can’t push away. To protect and be her hands.

Left an old tourniquet behind. Limb and cane. Gone. Filling up on sand now. Thighs screeching like birds above our heads.

Who can take it? This pressure.

A thousand times yes. To course skin, lava tits, molten words and sea cliffs, to horse ears, to running creeks. To a dream that is felt through the day. To an opening in the fence. Sea grass whippings. Can I take it?

Melted. Wanted. Died. Burned. Born. Gotten. Made.

The original mother, she is you.

How to bring to the surface. To find words, to find life. To make.

The original mother, she is you.

Powdery. Fertile. Holy. A hair dress. A thigh slinking through.

How did showing a tit become dangerous? A tit under a flame, on ice. How to hold a cup in your hand. A delicate flower. A tit. Is life, is origin.

The original mother, she is you.

She is living on a river braid. When did we stop worshipping animals?

How to hold the views? How to move like a snake. On this cliff. How to brace. Dripping. Poulticed. Paranoid. How to keep going along its edge. Roots of sea grass holding this sand. How does a cliff exist? How is it alive?

The original mother, she is you.

THIS BURNING LIQUID BEING THAT I AM

March 25 - April 15, 2023 | The Drey Gallery 1229A Woodbine Ave. | East York

www.thedreygallery.com |647-210-1936 | drew@thedreygallery.com

And be this burning liquid being that I am.

I wanted a snake glove and grew it in a dream. What does it take to be a flower, a medium? I have taken up swimming in the Chanel drinking with a whale and floating ideas. It's so short you say this life. This tale. This dream.

I'm really getting a hang for this transformational way of living she said.

I thought about how far she's gotten. You know dissolving into pools, floating on bog ponds, worming into new forms. Yah my skin has gotten really soft and the electricity is in my veins now. I am existence she says.

I've left an old face behind. Still burning around the edges.

Gone to the hot springs. How to hold molten tits? Melt words? Course lava? And be this burning liquid being that I am.

And be this burning liquid being that I am.

I heard she's gone to the ocean side. The cold waters clear my head she says.

I'm all red silk lingerie in deep waters. Ghosts in my nostrils. Guts on shore. I'm making a bed out of crab shells and tampon applicées. All this labour is aging me well. My hair trestles down like seaweed. And my skirt opens up like a great white shark.

And be this burning liquid being that I am.

Material

Cardboard holds a life. In stillness. in the dark. In a closet. Warm. Bed. Blanket. Move. a new inhabit.She started growing cardboard. This is the life she thought. Shapes. Form. The ridges. I see myself now. A material. Dissolving. Burning. Chemical.

WOMAN IN THE WOODS SOLO EXHIBITION

3-6 March, 2022. | SHOW GALLERY 978 Queen W. | Toronto

As a child, I followed my dog into the woods. I got pretty good at eating grass and picking up scents. And when I could, I was on all fours and barefoot. It was hard to keep up. I didn’t talk to her or pet her. When she drank at the stream, I did. When she lay down for a rest, I did. We would look out at grassy fields or up at the sky, feeling what we were feeling.
Woman in the woods. A woman deep in her interior. Animals emerge from her. There are parts of her in them. But they are also wild and free. She is beyond conquer. She is ecstatic, saturated and in love. All her selves are known.
I am the dog following the woman in the woods following the dog.
My process
I work in my bedroom on the floor with my mother on my bed. Her words are yes, keep going, hmmmm mmmmm. I brought my bedroom into the gallery to show how woman work. There is no separation. We are inside what we make. I am a woman in a woman. I am a mother with a mother. I am an artist.
My work is strung up on clothing lines just as it is in my bedroom. I want to remove edifices and distance and bring us inside ourselves.