The Milton Resnick Passlof Foundation is pleased to present Jane Freilicher and Thomas Nozkowski: True Fictions, an exhibition that features paintings by both artists side-by-side for the first time.
Curated by Eric Brown, the inspiration for True Fictions originated from ideas expressed in Thomas Nozkowski’s tribute to Freilicher for the American Academy of Arts and Letters after her death in 2004: “Jane Freilicher’s pictures are all will. Beyond their sweet surfaces and easy beauty they are hard as nails. They are tough-minded things.” Reading this statement, Brown thought Nozkowski could have been describing his own work.
Brown introduces the show’s premise in his essay for the exhibition catalogue: that the paintings on display share what Freilicher might have called a “sympathetic vibration.” Both artists approached their work from a place of feeling, generosity, and endless curiosity. Improvisation, one could say, was their lifeblood.
“I have always thought of myself as an improviser,” Nozkowski once said. Freilicher described how “as the process of painting evolves, other things enter into it — a discovery of what I think I’m seeing.” Improvisation provided them with an endless source of self-renewal, with each painting offering, to quote the poet John Ashbery, a “mooring of starting out.”
Brown’s discussion of both artists adds: “This show isn’t tendentious but expansive and open-ended. My hope is that the viewer will come to see these bodies of work anew, each through the lens of the other.”
Jane Freilicher and Thomas Nozkowski: True Fictions continues through February 26, 2022, at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, located at 87 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002. Public hours are Thursday through Saturday from 11am to 6pm.
To learn more about the exhibition and catalogue, visit resnickpasslof.org.
