This publication brings together over 140 works produced over the past twenty-five years by the Venezuelan American artist Magdalena Suarez Frimkess. Frimkess’s hand-built ceramic sculptures – figures, vases, tiles, cups, plates – are emblazoned with vivid decorations blending mythological figures with cartoon characters in redolent tableaux vivants. Recurring among them are Minnie and Mickey Mouse, Betty Boop, Popeye, Felix the Cat, and Chilean hero Condorito, all tenderly but uncannily rendered in glazed stoneware and often in surreal reimaginings of their familiar misadventures. Frimkess’s works delight in cross-pollinating cartoon and myth, humour and pathos, and its iconography alludes to a deeper fascination with the comedy and tragedy entwined in the human condition.
This comprehensive collection of her works is accompanied by essays by curators Douglas Fogle and Hanneke Skerath and critic Olivia Laing, as well as a photo essay by Catherine Opie. Bringing long-overdue attention to an astonishingly prolific artist, this volume immerses us in Frimkess’s unique visual landscape.
