NEPHEWS
An exhibition by Fryd Frydendahl
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY JANUARY 20. 2017. TIME: 17.00 – 22.00 OPENING SPEECH BY MORTEN BO (Founder of Fatamorgana) TIME: 17.00 ARTIST TALK WITH FRYD FRYDENDAHL SATURDAY JANUARY 21. TIME 13.00
EXHIBITION PERIOD JANUARY 21 – FEBRUARY 18. 2017.
V1 Gallery is pleased to present Nephews – a solo exhibition by Fryd Frydendahl.
Nephews takes its departure in a tragedy. Frydendahl’s older sister died in child labor leaving behind her infant son and his older brother. Frydendahl who had just started her artistic education at Fatamorgana School of Photography in Copenhagen was devastated by grief.
As a mean to process the loss of her sister and maintaining her close to heart and mind she began photographing her nephews. Out of a personal need, a unique relationship and collaboration with the young boys was established. They entered an unspoken pact that 10 years later would result in the exhibition and the book ‘Nephews’. In collaborating the three of them renegotiated a tragedy that could have just as easily set them all adrift. They chose each other instead. Creating an intimate, respectful, playful and tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love, loss and family.
The exhibition consists of 26 colour photographs varying in size and medium created between 2006 and 2016. The works depict the boys coming of age. Playing, contemplating, caring, hiding, performing, not caring and just being. There is an ongoing interplay between the boys and Frydendahl. They seem to inhabit an almost magic space together, where common rules and regulations do not apply or are easily bend for adventure. The same kind of magical sentiment as you will find in Antoine de Saint – Exupéry’s The Little Prince. In many of the images the boys are semi masked, in costume or character, morphing in or out of a fox’s fur, wearing a cone for a beak – turning into swans, veiled in pink embroidery, wearing suits – hair slicked back or semi visible behind a self confident plume of vapor from an e-cigarette. Creating and playing with identity. Becoming. While we see the boys physically change from boys to young men, we gradually sense a change in Fryd’s art. Images grow from beautifully defiant into mature bloom. Like the boys they carry themselves differently.
Nephews is a seminal body of work. A modern tragedy. Splintering the rules of traditional narration and engagement. Fryd Frydendahl has created an original poetic visual language.
Fryd Frydendahl, born 1984 on the west coast of Denmark, divides her time between New York and Denmark. She graduated from Fatamorgana, Copenhagen in 2006 and received an advance Certificate from The international Center of Photography, New York in 2009. Her first book, Familiealbum, was published by the Danish Publishing house Nyt Nordisk Forlag in 2007. The book featured a collection of intimate portraits from “the youth house”, a Danish punk venue that was sadly evicted and demolished in 2007. She is the recipient of grants from Fogtdahl’s Rejsestipendie, The Henry Margolis Foundation, and Josephine Lyons Merit Scholarship. She was part of the 2011 CCNY fellowship program. In 2016 her collaborative project with Jacob Birch – They Didn’t Want to Pierce The Sun – was published by Danish publishing house Roulette Russe. In conjunction with the exhibition the New York publishing house Konnotation Publishing will release the book Nephews (182 pages in a first edition of 500). The book will be available at the opening. Frydendahl has exhibited widely. This is her second exhibition with V1 Gallery.
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