Like the Spice is pleased to present Shards, an exhibition fresh from the hands of Los Angeles based artist Treasure Frey. In this, her first solo show at Like the Spice, Treasure explores the boundaries of her paper works, offering assemblies that appear to have burst from their constraints, and... Read more
Like the Spice is pleased to present Shards, an exhibition fresh from the hands of Los Angeles based artist Treasure Frey. In this, her first solo show at Like the Spice, Treasure explores the boundaries of her paper works, offering assemblies that appear to have burst from their constraints, and then been carefully pieced back together. These little explosions form eloquent and ordered tangrams of color that simultaneously invoke destruction and creation.
Ms. Frey’s most recent body of work focuses on small slices of color, a visible translation of a specific energy. Influenced by particles, waves, atoms, and organisms, Treasure’s conservation of matter forces all of these elements to act in concert, revealing formal visual decisions to form their own microcosms, macrocosms. In these obssessionalist collages Treasure considers, cuts, lays her gouache and acrylic, tapes, and then begins again; her process is a cycle in which the critical mass occurs again. Each singular unit of her energy and color act together to form a machine which, when whole, commands a greater and more powerful place than before.
As can be expected, the notion of energy and geometry takes a major role in Treasure Frey’s work. To Treasure, energy and its signifiers are pervasive in many possible and potential forms. The range of “where” and “how” becomes unbounded, and, surprisingly, begins to turn from goal to method as her works begin to happen. She plays and she plays until a driving pulse of movement and energy is discovered generating a sensory explosion of light and vibration. Aware of her own methods, Treasure insists there is never a planned start or finish in the making of her pieces; they grow as if they have a life of their own.
It is the process of bringing these connections to fruition that is the most exciting and satisfying to Ms. Frey. In Shards, many of her new forms have become almost serpentine. They twist and travel within the edge of the work and at times they even go off of the page. Even the bitter chaos found here and there (a meandering ribbon or a geometric white shard lazily overstepping expected constraints) serves as a counterpoint to the sweet order of Treasure’s lines and corners, stars and tunnels. The connection and harmony between these chromatic entities coalesce, and Treasure offers us all a fluid whole where before there were only pieces.
Treasure graduated Cum Laude from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1997 and received her BFA in Communication Arts. She has had several solo shows from coast to coast including Lake Gallery in San Fransisco, and GLO’s in Seattle, Washington and has participated in several group shows including exhibitions in Hang Art Gallery , 4 Cult Culture Gallery, and Mardrone Art Lounge. Her work has been added to several private collections in both New York in California. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
