Zipora Fried; The Sky is Big in California, 2026; Colored pencil on archival museum board; 60 x 60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
ADAA FAIR. PARK AVENUE ARMORY, BOOTH A3
PREVIEW: NOVEMBER 12; PUBLIC DAYS: NOVEMBER 13-16
For the inaugural ADAA Fair, Sikkema Malloy Jenkins is pleased to present a selection of new works by Zipora Fried.
Zipora Fried creates rich, multi-pigmented compositions that expand our experience of color, medium, and gesture. Working on the floor, Fried applies each line of color to the surface of the paper, one after another, in a rigorous act of endurance. These marks cohere into landscapes of varying hue and intensity, passing from fields of deep shadow and saturation into shimmering sequences of light. The scale of her works is similarly comprehensive, ranging from diaristic, letter-sized compositions to large-scale monuments of color and line.
The body of work to be presented at the ADAA signals a shift in Fried’s practice, as her mastery of mark-making gives way to a renewed experimentation with form. Her earlier drawings were composed within what Fried considers a “controlled” process: colors were planned in advance, and the height of each row was fixed. Fried’s new works were drawn in “freehand,” guided by the artist’s formal and gestural intuition. The precision and forethought that characterized her previous work have evolved into a series of incitements, with each application of color confronting the potential for incoherence. Opaque blocks of pigment—almost painterly in their density—contrast with loose, sweeping lines that breathe freely and chart their own paths. These visual fields are often intercut with fissures of diminutive strokes, emerging between rows like cracks in a sculpture or tears in fabric. In some of the most compelling negotiations between fluidity and control, several of Fried’s new works combine her earlier, premeditated system with her freehand approach. The result is a disorienting convergence of spectral forms and expressive gestures, seemingly oscillating between a digital interface and an analog image.
Grounded in a full command of medium and technique, Fried’s new works push the boundaries of her visual language into a space of discovery and risk. By surrendering to intuition, she reveals the potential of the artist’s hand to both make and unmake form.
Zipora Fried (b. Haifa, Israel) studied at the Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna. Recent exhibitions include Trust Me, Be Careful, I Like Your Shoes, Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, (2025); Birthday Boy: Jubilation and Melancholia (2023), Zipora Fried (2021), and As the Ground Turns (2019) at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; (wordless) at Small Editions, New York (2017); Late October at On Stellar Rays, New York (2016); and Zipora Fried: Some Things Have Meaning, Others Don’t at Marfa Contemporary, Marfa, Texas (2015). Her work is included in the Austrian Government’s Permanent Collection of Contemporary Art; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Jewish Museum, Vienna, Austria; Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Fried currently lives and works in New York.