Jean Alexander Frater: Color Form

McHenry County College is thrilled to host a Gallery Talk + Artist Reception for Jean Alexander Frater’s solo exhibition, Color Form.

January 22 – February 23, 2024
McHenry County College | Galleries One & Two
8900 U.S. Highway 14, Crystal Lake, IL 60012

Gallery Talk & Reception: Wednesday, February 21
3:30 — Gallery One (A212x)

Free and open to the public

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ARTIST STATEMENT

What is the weight of color? When color defines the form what is the thing that is contained? Can we animate that body, give it movement, let it grow and then maybe it becomes something else?

I paint large fields of color directly onto raw canvas stapled to my studio wall, then tear those paintings into strips, and use the torn up strips to rebuild the paintings. The original wall colorfield paintings (before they are torn up) are 3 to 5 times the size of the objects that are presented here. By literally tearing the Paintings into strips, the Paintings have been destroyed but the materials that remain are used to build themselves back up again. They are doubled over and repeated. Their scale is reduced and the images are narrowed or condensed. The paintings ask questions about what they are? What was being destroyed, taken apart and then built back up? What of the painting remains; what kind of object has it become?

When I make these paintings, I have named them and their parts in different ways. I think about the large forms of color as “bodies”. As I rebuild the paintings, the malleable material redefines the edges, and I build or weave the bodies of color together. New shapes are woven, layered, and formed. The overall scale is reduced, but sections grow or swell in different ways. I call these movements: “bumps” or “appendages” where the forms extend beyond the frame or bulge out from the flattened surface.

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BIO

Jean Alexander Frater experiments with the materials inherent to painting and then integrates other histories, traditions and language into this form. Alexander Frater is represented by Engage Gallery in Chicago. She was a 2017-2018 Chicago Artists BOLT resident, received an MFA from School of Art the Institute of Chicago, and a BA in Philosophy, from the University of Dayton, Ohio. Her work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as the Wexner Center for Arts, Columbus; El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe; Images Festival, Toronto; Ben-Gurion airport, Tel Aviv; Kulturhuset, Stockholm, THE MISSION Gallery, Chicago; Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Chicago; GAVLAK Gallery in Los Angeles, Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn, Guest Spot @ The Reinstitute, Baltimore, and McKenzie Fine Art in New York. Jean is the Director of Artist Run Project Space Material.

View Alexander Frater’s work at www.alexanderfrater.com or on Instagram @jeanalexanderfrater.

Image: Jean Alexander Frater, Grey Zone, 2023, Paint on canvas

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Tags: Chicago, Color/Form, Crystal Lake, Jean Alexander Frater, Jean Alexander Frater: Color Form, McHenry County, McHenry County College