Sixteen tins line the gallery’s perimeter; originally used to package fish or chicken products, they now house pithy assemblages. Fremderman discards the tin’s edible innards in favour of fragmented garments, accessories, and notions, resembling homespun character portraits. They tote the efficient beauty of the assembly line, recalling an era of low-price, pre-designed single-family homes—signalling suburban sprawl and the rise of office work. Aggregating around an intersection at once carnivorous and corporate, she points towards an exterior—a professionalism—and an interior—what is ingested.
What we eat is eventually absorbed or discarded. Plastics broken down from packaging and synthetic fibres of fast fashion garments are now found in the fish, meat, salt or vegetables ingested by the body. They unite us all in a similar (ill) fate, a tragic-comedy played in unison by a food pyramid. Before widespread adoption of factory farming, the 19th century pioneered rose-tinted glasses for chicken (subsequently mass produced). Cannibalistic at the appearance of blood, seeing the world already steeped in hues of red was meant to diminish the chicken’s urge for neighbourly consumption. One must not upset the food chain—you have to wear the uniform to work.
Bea Fremderman (b. 1988, Kishinev, Moldova) is a New York-based visual artist. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. Her current research centres around feelings of global dread. Recent solo exhibitions include Weeds Compared to Flowers at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Stranger Man at Atlanta Contemporary, How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself at Shoot The Lobster (New York), Barren Island at Prairie (Chicago), and Office Space at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco). Select group exhibitions include 12.26 (Dallas), Morán Morán (Los Angeles), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Arsenal Contemporary, april april, and The New Museum (New York).
