Artist: Brad Kronz
Exhibition title: Nine Types of Industrial Pollution
Venue: Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Date: June 2 – July 30, 2023
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz lives and works in New York. In his practice, framing, supporting structures, vantage points, depth and trompe-l’oeil are combined across media. Often starting from the art or creations of others, his works quietly undo the differences between the personal and cultural artifacts they employ.
Devoid of the figure, with exception to the occasional insect or bird, Nine Types of Industrial Pollution presents a view of art without people. Several sculptural ensembles occupy the room as a resonant zone. Within each object lies the potential for a hidden site of abstraction.
Running down the long aisle of windows, a series of three wooden assemblages resembling embellished miniature walls ( Merge Mansion, 2023 ; Galerie 5, 2022 ; What they did for folk revival, 2022 ) follow one after another. Photos of the same location ( an actual gallery / restaurant that existed in 1980s southern California ) are inlaid into each of these objects. This setting and its depicted artworks take the place of content. Each piece offers an obscured view or insight to pass through the artworks themselves. Their filled interior constitutes a subjective residue of the natural world, a mixture of wool, the skin of almonds.
Elsewhere, a drawing framed only in paper ( Helium, 2023 ) replicates in graphite a ceramic sculpture. Strange birds pose oddly on tree branches, recalling forms of popular art and animation invested with an energy of sharing and communion, a latent, even utopian unconscious of mass art. Other works in the exhibition draw on the transmission of life onto form, from the illustration of an archaic mystery ( Untitled, 2019), to a creeping illusion of movement (It’s not fun anymore (b), 2023).
The arrangement of the objects in the space, disguised by a thin layer of style, produces the effect of displacement and distortion that technology erases in order to maintain its realistic universe, unlike the real world, in which we continue to move. Whether in the two black lacquered pedestals Pedestal ( 2013 ) and Jazz Relationships ( 2023 ), with their deceptively similar materials constructed in dialogue 10 years apart, or in the upturned panel on the verso of Sistine Chapel ( 2023 ) in which two pieces of metal pretend to touch, the art becomes a quasi-devotional evaporation of the relationship between content, mode of display, and form.
Kronz’s works repeatedly solicit attention to details that mostly guide us to another side : the cultural mysticism of a touched America, obscure beyond existence.
Brad Kronz ( *1986, San Diego, California ) has been based in New York City for many years. He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Recent exhibitions include The Label Lied ( with Jessy Reaves ) at High Art, Paris / Arles, 2022 ; Strong and Tough at Galerie Lars Friedrich, Berlin, 2021 ; Now You Know, Gandt, New York, 2019 ; Long Hallway, Forde, Geneva, 2018.
Exhibition view, Brad Kronz, Nine Types of Industrial Pollution, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Exhibition view, Brad Kronz, Nine Types of Industrial Pollution, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Merge Mansion, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Merge Mansion, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Merge Mansion, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Merge Mansion, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Galerie 5, 2022. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Galerie 5, 2022. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Galerie 5, 2022. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Galerie 5, 2022. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, What they did for folk revival, 2022. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, What they did for folk revival, 2022. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, What they did for folk revival, 2022. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Untitled, 2019. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Untitled, 2019. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Untitled, 2019. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Exhibition view, Brad Kronz, Nine Types of Industrial Pollution, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Jazz Relationships, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Exhibition view, Brad Kronz, Nine Types of Industrial Pollution, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Exhibition view, Brad Kronz, Nine Types of Industrial Pollution, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Blues Traveller, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Sistine Chapel, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Sistine Chapel, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Helium, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, The Ghost of Ann Dowd, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, The Ghost of Ann Dowd, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Exhibition view, Brad Kronz, Nine Types of Industrial Pollution, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, It is not fun anymore (b), 2019. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Brad Kronz, Pedestal, 2013. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Exhibition view, Brad Kronz, Nine Types of Industrial Pollution, Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, 2023. Photo : Guillaume Python. Courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
