Sarah Fripon at Renata Fabbri

Renata Fabbri is pleased to present Fine, Thank You, Sarah Fripon’s first solo exhibition in Italy. The project is part of the gallery’s project room programme, and features a series of new paintings in dialogue with sculptural elements created by the artist in response to the specificity of the exhibition site. Drawing on a sizeable archive of digital images, screenshots, stock photos, advertisements and iconic images – quoted, combined and elaborated through free concatenations of visual associations – Fripon’s pictorial practice reflects the paradoxes of the contemporary world in a time of crisis. Created mainly using soft colours, the paintings appear blurred and faded, like out-of-focus snapshots of fleeting moments and vanishing memories, generating an effect of visual misalignment, further emphasised by the use of airbrushing.

Like a time capsule that preserves and archives its current state of energy and exchange, the project recreates an environment that yields fragments of images and objects from a distorted society continually fed by deceptive capitalist superstructures with no means to an end. Vague and concrete, the title suggests a signal, an almost self-evident and ‘automatic’ answer to a question that, although intuitable, we are not allowed to know, at least for now.

Mysterious and at times far-fetched, Sarah Fripon’s sceneries blend with ordinary and familiar situations, echoing the aura of vanishing memories or lost places. The fleeting and undefined outlines of the subjects portrayed seem to invite spectators to distance themselves from them in order to fully grasp their clarity, as well as to come to terms with reality, questioning the truthfulness of the images we consume on a daily basis. Like out-of-focus snapshots, these acrylics on canvas act as a chain within the exhibition space, drawing each other. A woman’s face is depicted wearing a shiny mask that appears to be made up of strips of LED. Composed as of layers of a curtain of light adheres to the face, this mask proves to be a necessary ‘instrument’ for navigating through the proliferation and global circulation of images that permeate our daily life to the point of affecting it. At the mercy of deceptive capitalist super-structures and paradoxical systems in which society keeps growing, some houses are instead precariously perched on a stack of shaky-looking coins.

A businessman in a suit and tie travels on a real ‘cloud’, here illustrated in a “fluffy” way, as the title suggests. With apparently no precise destination, this figure floats in a sky marked by traces of light, in the hands of fate, heading towards a future still unknown to him. All three works evoke instability and resilience at the same time, revealing to the eye states of mind and sensations that we have all experienced at least once.

Although Fripon’s practice tends to focus mostly on pictorial research, the artist also works in sculptures and installations, which often enter into dialogue with the canvases. Conceived on coming face to face with the peculiarities of the exhibition venue, these works, together with the paintings, respond to the intention of creating an atmosphere as if in a kind of time capsule that preserves and archives its current state of energy and exchange.

Given the relatively small venue on the lower floor of the gallery, the lack of natural light and the rather low ceiling, the artist reacted to the space by imagining these three sculptural elements as tools nourishing a chain of feelings, suggestions and echoes within the space, where a mostly closed door leads to some cellars inaccessible to visitors, but whose presence is however quite palpable. Consisting of modular zinc pipes assembled together, two of these sculptures are installed close to the corners of the room, while a third one lies on the floor.

Inside them are lights and crystal spheres of different sizes which function as illuminated and mirrored spots, symbols that, “according to cultural wisdom, predict the future and refer to the esoteric and to fortune”, affirms the artist. Like free concatenations of ‘visual associations’, these pipes bring some of the surrounding’s vibrancy into their modular form, while also resonating with the question of the future of energy supply and the notion of nostalgic homeliness associated with the idea of stove heating.

Sarah Fripon, Fine, Thank You, 2023. Installation view at Sotto Project Room, Renata Fabbri, Milan. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, Esoteric Pipe 3, 2023, zinc pipes, glass sphere, cable, 110 x 15 x 30 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, Esoteric Pipe 3, 2023, zinc pipes, glass sphere, cable, 110 x 15 x 30 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, If Only I Could, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 x 2,5 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, If Only I Could, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 x 2,5 cm (left); Sarah Fripon, Brassy Houses, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 x 2,5 cm (right). Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, Esoteric Pipe 2, 2023, zinc pipes, glass sphere, cable, 175 x 15 x 15 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, Fine, Thank You, 2023. Installation view at Sotto Project Room, Renata Fabbri, Milan. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, Esoteric Pipe 1, 2023, zinc pipes, glass sphere, LED spot, cable, 40 x 40 x 35 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, Businessman Sitting on a White Fluffy Cloud Enjoying Himself, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 110 x 2,5 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, Businessman Sitting on a White Fluffy Cloud Enjoying Himself, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 110 x 2,5 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mattia Mognetti

Sarah Fripon, Fine, Thank You, 2023. Installation view at Sotto Project Room, Renata Fabbri, Milan. Photo: Mattia Mognetti