Mengyun Han Between Sun and Stone Suzan Frecon: oil paintings David Zwirner, NY September 10 - October 17, 2020

Figure. 1. Suzan Frecon, brushwood haematites, 2018, Oil on linen, Overall: 108 x 87 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches 274.3 x 222.3 x 3.8 cm, Panel, each: 54 x 87 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches 137.2 x 222.3 x 3.8 cm, © Suzan Frecon. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.

Suzan Frecon believes that her paintings serve a wordless experience. Without the embellishment

of literary reference, they are, to reference Leonardo da Vinci’s in The Treatise on Painting

(1632), “poems without words, music without sounds”. Her recent exhibition on view at David

Zwirner in New York renders an inaudible symphony for the eyes, reminiscent of John Cage’s

composition, 4’33”(1952), a temporal and durational experience that aims at the very silence of

the psyche. But it is neither through relinquishing the act of painting nor through painting the

canvas white that Frecon achieves a state of emptiness. Contrarily, it is a sensuous syntax of col-

or and form in space that forges a synaesthetic quietude in the mind of the viewer. It intrigued me

to fathom what this silence is and how it is created by such fullness of visual vocabulary.

What struck me foremost about Frecon’s painting is the dynamic interplay between the matte and

glossy surfaces. Her choice of material is inspired by the abstract visual configuration of Cim-

abue’s painting and Romanesque cathedrals. Interested in the retinal impact of medieval painting,

Frecon renders the subtly changing surfaces by mimicking the sheen and light of the burnished

gold and dazzling gold leaf. And it is exactly this sheen of gold — long associated with notions

of divinity, incorruptibility and eternity — that calls forth the sense of sublimity, evoking venera-

tion of the divine, without preaching.

In her latest interview, Frecon defines the content of her painting as the paint itself and that

“landscape, architecture, human beings and their consciousness [are] all there, but it’s not a de-

piction. ” But what is the content of the paint when it does not depict? The paint is a metaphor, a 1

signifier for something which the paint is not, in order to explain the ineffable and to name the

nameless. What the materiality and visuality of the paint reveal is a conglomeration of its histor-

ical practice and human memory, a testament to human perception and its endless possibilities, to

which every culture and its peoples contribute. The divine experience induced by a Byzantine

painting, a gold gilded Buddhist statue, or an illuminated Persian album correlates to our re-

sponse to Frecon’s paintings because our eyes are attuned to this history of visual codification,

however abstracted the form is, however secular we are now. Postwar American painters strived

to free painting from the burden of history; the symbols and metaphors they embedded in color

and materiality have resurfaced in Frecon’s transcendental space, where our deeper conscious-

ness seeks a dwelling and the language of god is unknown.

Jennifer Samet, “Beer with a Painter: Suzan Frecon” (Hyperallergic, November 21, 2020), <https://hyperallergic.1 -com/602535/beer-with-a-painter-suzan-frecon/>

Figure 2. Suzan Frecon, stone cathedral, Oil on linen, Overall: 108 1/2 x 87 5/8 x 1 1/2 inches 275.6 x 222.6 x 3.8 cm; Panel, each: 54 1/4 x 87 5/8 x 1 1/2 inches 137.8 x 222.6 x 3.8 cm, 2019. © Suzan Frecon. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner

The American poet and critic John Yau has posed an interesting comparison between Suzan Fre-

con and the spiritual painter Hilma af Klint, as both aspire to bring consciousness to its highest

plane. Yet, Frecon observes the geometry and the material elements that underlie our experience

of past architecture and art, to then crystallise this observation in her paintings . The inherent 2

structure is prominent in her stone cathedral (2019), alluding to a sense of spatial balance.

Beholding the dominant ovoid or arch forms hovering on the monumental picture plane re-

sembles standing in front of a gigantic mountain as they bear a formidable weight and volume,

which remind us of the immensity of the world, our very finite existence and lack of power. This

John Yau, “Suzan Frecon’s Patience Should Be Rewarded” (Hyperallergic, March 22, 2015), <https://hyperaller2 -gic.com/192175/suzan-frecons-patience-should-be-rewarded/>.

abstract nature reincarnated on canvas immerses the viewer in the same way a womb harbours an

infant, a temple shelters a soul. That is how mysticism comes into being: a need to interpret and

understand the mythical world and its phenomena, in which human expressions fall short. The

Greek word for mystery, µυσ, means “to close the mouth or the eyes”. As the mouth closes, the

mind awakens to communications beyond the imperfect word.

Figure 3. Untitled by anonymous, Bikaner, 14x10cm (Tantra Song, Siglio, 2011). Courtesy Siglio Press . 3

What is also worth noting, if we delve deeper into Frecon’s eclectic visual references and her his-

torical knowledge of materiality, are the anonymous Tantric paintings from the 17th century Ra-

jasthan collected by the late French poet Franck André Jamme, who exhibited them in 2004 at

New York’s Drawing Center. These abstract Tantric Hindu paintings, at first sight strikingly sim-

ilar to the 20th century abstract art, were made by adepts in India as tools for private meditation

Ed. Franck André Jamme, Tantra Song - Tantric Painting from Rajasthan, (Los Angeles: Siglio Press, 2011), p.18.3

to awaken heightened states of consciousness, serving as intermediaries between the transcend-

ent and the immanent . Frecon’s friendship with Jamme might have allowed these paintings to 4

lodge in her subconscious, given how strikingly similar the way their respective visual syntax

manoeuvres the eye and subsequently the mind.

The Rorschach inkblot-like gouache stains in the Śivaliṅga tantric painting (Fig. 3) dissolves and

frees the mind to an ocean of associative imagination which awaits divine manifestation, in this

case, Śiva. Leonardo da Vinci finds similar experiences in “look[ing] into the stains of walls, or

ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places in which….you may find really marvellous

ideas ”. The mixture of oil and pigment saturating Frecon’s canvas works in a similar fashion to 5

summon a deeper level of consciousness where the babbling ego abandons her language to ob-

serve the silence of her consciousness. Jamme has clearly observed the Tantric painting’s visual

effect on aiding the mind to let go of the ego, as is poignantly murmured in his poem The Recita-

tion of Forgetting (La Récitation de l’oubli):

While a single red line, against the earth’s ocher. Sleeping wall of energy and blood, of fear and force. Other trials. Did you find yourself, child? Did you lose yourself ? 6

While the viewer is lost in following a visual riddle, she finds herself again in the centripetal

force of the liṅgam, the aniconic representation of Śiva, an emblem of generative power. The ho-

rizontal ovoid shape that frequents Frecon’s paintings, such as in the case of brushwood haemat-

ites (2018), modifies the Śivaliṅga in an interesting way by reorienting the phallic object and di-

minishing its potency. Without the power of intimidation, the liṅga did not become a yoni, a

vulva, but something neutral as a piece of stone that neither overpowers nor submits, inviting the

beholder to observe its serene immovable nature.

Ajit Mookerjee, The Tantric Way, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977), p.46.4

Carl G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (Dell Publishing, 1968), p.10. 5

Franck André Jamme, translated by John Ashbery, “The Recitation of Forgetting”(La Récitation de l’oubli), 6

<https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/fr/Jamme%2C_Franck_Andr%C3%A9-1947/La_R%C3%A9citation_de_l%E2%80%99oubli/en/37981-The_Recitation_of_Forgetting/>

When the tantrikas obtain oneness with the manifested deity in the deepest recesses of their un-

conscious through yoga and meditation, with the support of these paintings, they find themselves

in an unprecedented state of mental and emotional calm . This imaginative experience of tran7 -

quility corresponds to śāntarasa, the ninth rasa, or aesthetic savouring, of the Indian aesthetic

theory that underlies all classical images in Indian art . Abhinavagupta (c.950-1025 CE), the cel8 -

ebrated Kashmiri philosopher, aesthetician and yogi, compares śāntarasa as the supreme rasa to

the experience of mokṣa, or spiritual liberation , in which the viewer enjoys sheer undifferenti9 -

ated eternal bliss, ānanda, the ultimate aim of Tantra . This sense of bliss is comparable to the 10

highest enjoyment of timelessness and a state of ecstasy described by Vladimir Nabokov in his

Speak, Memory:

“And the highest enjoyment of timelessness – in a landscape selected at random – is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone.”

Frecon’s visual reference to the art of the Indian tantric tradition imbues her painting with a tran-

scendent power, invoking an emancipatory sensation. Yet the reflective surface mimicking gold

adds another dimension of spirituality that points to various systems of belief and means of wor-

ship. Mediating disparate visual compositions and materialities, Suzan Frecon’s paintings, at a

great level of nuance, bring the viewer to a sense of oneness not with any god, but with the sun

and the stone, as she worships their silence.

Masson, J L; Patwardhan, M.V., Śāntarasa and Abhinavagupta's Philosophy of Aesthetics, (Bhandarkar Oriental 7

research Institute, 1969),Introduction-VII-VIII.

Ajit Mookerjee, The Tantric Way, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977), p.80.8

Masson, J L; Patwardhan, M.V., Śāntarasa and Abhinavagupta's Philosophy of Aesthetics, (Bhandarkar Oriental 9

research Institute, 1969),Introduction-VII-VIII

Ajit Mookerjee, Tantra Asana, a way to self-realization. (Ravi Kumar, 1 Jan. 1971), p.15.10