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Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: The Finest Disregard

Name: Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: The Finest Disregard
Brand: LACMA Store
SKU: 66568
Price: 49.95 USD
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Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: The Finest Disregard is the first museum exhibition of L.A.-based and Venezuelan-born artist Magdalena Suarez Frimkess (b. 1929). Trained in painting, print-making, and sculpture in Venezuela, Chile, and New York, Suarez Frimkess’s most recognized works are clay. Spanning over five decades, The Finest Disregard features ceramics, paintings, and drawings, including an important selection of works made collaboratively with her husband, Michael Frimkess. Although her work is usually considered to stand outside the California ceramic tradition, this exhibition demonstrates otherwise. With many works shown in public for the first time, The Finest Disregard offers insights into the artist's fascination with art history books, popular media, cartoons, animation, autobiography, and the humor found in the folds between the layers of everyday life.

This catalogue presents her works from the ’70s to the present, including utilitarian objects, decorative figures and tiles. Her pieces are imbued with an equal sense of humor and dread. Their fragility and precarity increase the expressive power of these funny, outrageous, grotesque objects, which often seem as though they might collapse before our eyes at any moment.

In her studio, one is likely to encounter figurines inspired by Japanese horses or vintage American cartoons, vases ornamented with patterns from the ancient Americas, and tiles, plates, and cups decorated with flowers or scenes from her life in Venice.

A trio of characters recur throughout her oeuvre: a distressed Olive Oyl, an oblivious Minnie Mouse and the savvy Condorito—a Chilean cartoon from the ’50s that is
still very popular in Latin America. Frimkess affirms the wisdom of these cartoons; in her eyes, they are philosophers.

Edited with text by José Luis Blondet.

Foreword by Michael Govan.

Text by Luz Carabaño, Carribean Fragoza, Karin Gulbran, Jenni Sorkin, Ricky Swallow, Jonas Wood, Shio Kusaka.

- Hardcover
- 128 pages, 8.75 x 10 x .5 inch
- Published 2024

Located on the Pacific Rim, LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection of nearly 154,000 objects that illuminate 6,000 years of artistic expression across the globe. Committed to showcasing a multitude of art histories, LACMA exhibits and interprets works of art from new and unexpected points of view that are informed by the region’s rich cultural heritage and diverse population. LACMA’s spirit of experimentation is reflected in its work with artists, technologists, and thought leaders as well as in its regional, national, and global partnerships to share collections and programs, create pioneering initiatives, and engage new audiences.

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Magdalena Suarez Frimkess: The Finest Disregard

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