April 27 - May 27, 2018

The most recent work by Amanda Friedman expands from her home studio practice and extends a long standing artist tradition of yielding work along habitation. Friedman believes emotion is tied to architecture and allows her surroundings to inform and absorb into her work. For this exhibition, the contents of her studio have been transported to the gallery, complete with wooden storage loft, cardboard floor protection, and the scrawled notations both written and drawn that accumulate during her holistic process. The transplanted structure in the context of the gallery space is a sculptural element elaborated by drawings, fabric scraps, made objects, paint smudges, and writing. The construct serves as a physical manifestation of Friedman’s thought process; as well as a stage for a performance written by the artist and adapted from the poetry of Helen Adam. Adam was one of the few female poets who influenced / participated in the Beat Generation. Her poetry was primarily in the form of ballads and was preoccupied with the supernatural.

Friedman’s production, Helen Rides, is a one act play in five scenes to be performed at the gallery in conjunction with the exhibition. The scenes have been planned out via Friedman’s creative visual process and conceived on the premise that paintings and drawings equate to bodies and moving parts in space. As the script organically arose from visual thought, collaged material, and hand-written notation; the tactile work was concurrently charged by Friedman’s abode. Taking cues from old stained glass windows, and disassembled doorways; Friedman’s drawings, sculptures, and paintings take on the aura of her pre-war brooklyn apartment. The three main characters are “Pyramid Dancers” who protect an unknown source of desire from witches who take on the appearance of bright blue moths. Time is non-linear, actions happen during dreams and through other dimensions; the setting oscillates between a disheveled apartment and an eerie meadow.