[detail] I Am Not Tragically Colored  2013-14

[detail] I Am Not Tragically Colored 2013-14

Christie Contemporary is pleased to present to meet, or meet again, an exhibition of work by Erika DeFreitas, in her first solo exhibition with the gallery, opening Friday, September 10 and continuing until October 16, 2021. 

Erika DeFreitas embeds an indexing of gesture within her work, often at odds with expectation — illustrated sound, unfixed collage, a set of stills documenting motion Often conceived as serial arrays, individual images in combination acquire a considered cadence on viewing, where time slows or quickens to delineate the contours of an idea. The video work entitled, studies for gardens, cycles through a series of delicately spontaneous collage propositions, assembled and erased through gesture, as a kind of endless generator of possible landscapes, while the suite of photographs taking as its title Zora Neale Hurston’s quote, I am not tragically colored, comprises nine images, each silently representing a component syllable of the declaration — a visual utterance, slowed to the point of insistence, in a gesture that extends beyond the limits of the visible frame.