DeFreitas: although it sometimes gives the illusion of paint, 2016
Here we are having more fun with funny things—like putting flowers on walls: “We can decorate walls with pots and pans and flowers. I question the flowers.” We are also messing with the exhibition’s gestalt. What is usually in the background (the wall) is now foregrounded—and the wallpaper is now an autonomous art work in the exhibition, too, one that frames and is framed, in fact, by another work by DeFreitas—the original textile work on which the wallpaper is based. “How often do we see what we have not readily recognized. I readily recognize the object that has the most perfect quality of imitation.”
Erika DeFreitas, although it sometimes gives the illusion of paint (No. 29), 2016. Wallpaper. Technical support by Michael Maranda. Courtesy of the artist. Produced with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.
There are two wallpapered walls in the exhibition, a repetition that is key to its overall compositional rhythm—but always a repetition with a difference. Both sets of wallpaper are based on the textile work hanging on it. Doubling this work, we wonder where the frame is in the composition and evoke a central goal of Stein’s plays: to perform the rhythm that structure relations (Plays). “How lovelily the wall how lovelily all of the wall and we do not necessarily hesitate… the wall is thick and not heavy and has a support and when you look at it again they have not changed anything and yet it is to be painted red and a lemon yellow…”
GO BACK TO unsettling the frame
