Freya Douglas-Morris
Dejeuner sur la mer, 2024
oil on canvas
66 7/8 x 86 5/8 in. (170 x 220 cm.)

The Armory Show 2024

Javits Center, 429 11th Ave, New York, NY, Booth P10
September 6-8, 2024 (VIP Preview — September 5, 2024)

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST:

http://bit.ly/ABBowsherMatteMillsChecklist

Alexander Berggruen is pleased to present new paintings by Freya Douglas-Morris at The Armory Show 2024. Please visit us at Booth P10 in the Javits Center, New York, NY.

Show Dates & Times
Thursday, September 5, 2024: VIP Preview, 11 am-7 pm
Friday, September 6, 2024: 11 am–7 pm
Saturday, September 7, 2024: 11 am–7 pm
Sunday, September 8, 2024: 11 am–6 pm

Location
Booth P10
Javits Center
429 11th Ave
New York, NY 10001.

Installation of Freya Douglas-Morris solo booth at The Armory Show 2024 with Alexander Berggruen, NY.

Freya Douglas-Morris’s flourishing landscapes transcend the parameters of reality and faithful reproductions. Painting primarily from memory and imagination, Douglas-Morris mixes flora often not naturally seen together and traverses a broad range of sometimes hallucinatory color palettes. The consequent shifting unreality recalls the slippery, transitory nature of memory.

The artist is enchanted by the changing conditions of her surroundings, like Impressionists such as Monet and Bonnard. Her bold use of color punctuates the soft Matisse-like and Japanese woodblock-like forms of her sensuous facture. Through her fluid paint application, the artist’s landscapes appear to be internally illuminated, pulsing with resonant rhythmic light.

Speaking about her painting Dejeuner sur la mer, she stated, “As often in my paintings I like to address the quieter moments, the moments when something might have just happened (lunch) and before something else might happen (a swim) the lull between events. The surface of the painting becomes as much about the handling of paint, as it does about the description of the figures, landscape and sea, each sharing equal weight.”

For additional information and images, please contact the gallery at info@alexanderberggruen.com. You can also find more information about the fair on The Armory Show website.

About the Artist

This solo booth follows the gallery’s solo show with the artist Freya Douglas-Morris: This star I give to you (October 18-November 18, 2023), Douglas-Morris’s inclusion in the gallery’s booth at the Dallas Art Fair (April 20-23, 2023), and her inclusion in the group shows Freya Douglas-Morris, Tom Howse, Talia Levitt (April 20-23, 2023) and The Natural World: Part II (March 9-April 13, 2022).

Freya Douglas-Morris (b. 1980, London, United Kingdom) received a BA in fine arts from Brighton University, Brighton, UK and an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art, London, UK. Her work has been featured at galleries and museums including Alexander Berggruen, NY; Lehmann Maupin, London, UK; Larsen Warner, Stockholm, Sweden; Pilar Corrias, London, UK; Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, UK; HDM Gallery, Shenzhen, CN; The Manchester Contemporary, Manchester UK; Lychee One Gallery, London, UK; Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall, UK; CS Hospiz Rennweg, Vienna, AT; Yellow Gallery & Transition Gallery, Varese, IT; Dallas Contemporary Museum, Dallas, TX; and Liverpool Biennial, UK. Douglas-Morris’s work is included in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, TX. She was featured in The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting 2 in 2021 and 100 Painters of Tomorrow in 2014. The artist lives and works in London, UK.

For additional information and images, please contact the gallery at info@alexanderberggruen.com. You can also find more information about the fair on The Armory Show website.

Press

Gabriel Mills Glass And The Ghost Children, 2023 oil on wood panel, diptych 120 x 120 in. (304.8 x 304.8 cm.)

Tediums, treasures, traps

THE NEW CRITERION

On the other side of the floor stood Alexander Berggruen’s booth, this year reserved entirely for the artist Gabriel Mills. Berggruen hosted a solo show for Mills last fall, where the best work on display consisted of massive triptychs. The canvases of each triptych in the fall show alternated between thinly painted depictions of airy subjects, such as clouds, and canvases covered in inches of thick impasto. The idea, which is to generate a balance between the lightweight and heavy elements, was interesting then, but Mills has since taken it to another level.

At the Armory, Mills’s Glass and the Ghost Children (2023), a massive diptych, served as the gallery’s centerpiece. It’s electric. In his prior work, Mills conjured interplay by juxtaposing heavy canvases against light ones. Now, that interaction occurs as well within each frame. Weightless currents of oil swirl and stream through their dense counterparts, the former lifting the canvas, the latter bringing it down; an equilibrium is achieved that makes the piece appear to float, suspended in midair. The smaller Ohenguai (2023) and Thira (2023) prove potent too.