Tripoli Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Eric Freeman titled New Paintings. Privileged to have included Freeman’s luminous color field paintings in a number of group shows at the Tripoli Gallery, it is with great excitement to debut his most recent body of work in a setting where the full range of his expression can be experienced.

The paintings are ephemeral. While we understand that these works are fastened to the canvas, that the paint is permanent once dried, there is an ever-evolving quality to their surface—one seems to not only respond emotionally, but the paintings themselves react optically to the colors and light around them. Stripped of narrative and void of external references, what remains is pure and intense color.

In an age where artists are constantly exploring new mediums and trying to break away from what has already been done, Eric Freeman finds his mode of expression by pushing through the traditional medium of oil on canvas. He has continued to energize his own practice and the fundamentals of being a painter by experimenting with the combination of elements in the build up of oil paint.

Fascinated with the qualities that make up a color, he has recently started exploring with iridescent pigments, raising the depth of each color at hand, and adding just the right amounts of various oils, before applying the new blend to the canvas in confident and graceful brushstrokes.

Freeman applies layer upon layer, thinning them out intermittently—a process through which he creates different surfaces for light refraction to occur at various speeds, allowing the light to actually bounce between each layer resulting in a backlit quality.

Painter David Salle referenced an “illusive immateriality” to Freeman’s work, noting: “Where does the energy in these pictures come from? What does Freeman want us to feel? A sense of giving over to it; the thrill of the roller coaster gives way to something more internal. Accept the sheer physical/optical fact, these paintings seem to say, because that’s what painting is.”

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1970, Eric Freeman earned his B.F.A. from Tufts University in 1993. He has shown at the Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm, Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Alain Noirhomme, Brussels, Mary Boone Gallery, Stephen Stux Gallery and Feature Gallery in New York, Springs Fireplace Project and Glen Horowitz Gallery in East Hampton, The Western Project in Culver City, and the Saatchi Gallery in London.

His work is included in the collections of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland, Saatchi Gallery, London, and in the collection of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York.

Freeman currently lives and works in Sagaponack, New York.

Source:
Website of Tripoli Gallery



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Pulsating with an electrified glow, Eric Freeman’s paintings resonate disquiet energy, their minimal compositions dizzying in their defiance of space. Comprised of four diffused coloured bands set vertically against a black ground, his painting Industrial Road reverberates with immaculate tension, its forms appearing to undulate in 3D perspective.

Drawing comparison to abstract painters such as Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella, as well as sculptors such as Dan Flavin and James Turrell, Freeman’s work combines the illusory qualities of paint with the physicality of altered environment; his large scale canvases having the effect of magnetic fields, shifting the perception of centre of gravity.
Paying homage to artists such as Joseph Albers and Marc Rothko, Eric Freeman’s Red Inside Green re-devises the metaphysical qualities of abstract painting for a contemporary age. Using contrasting hues, Red Inside Green offers subtle deception through colour perspective, its geometric forms continuously bulging and receding in illusionary space.

Seamlessly painted in oil, Freeman’s canvas possesses an artificial vivacity; its ethereal glow reminiscent of plasma screen technology, creating an electrifying aura that is both spiritual and synthetic.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2005
Alain Noirhumme, Brussels , Belgium
Mary Boone Gallery, New York

2004
New Paintings, Western Project, Culver City

2003
Bjorn Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden.
Mary Boone Gallery, New York
Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica
Glen Horowitz Booksellers Gallery, East Hampton

2002
Mark Moore Gallery, New Paintings, Santa Monica

2001
Stefan Stux Gallery, New Paintings, New York

2000
Stefan Stux Gallery, New York

1999
Gallery 56, Budapest, Hungary