Suzan Frecon: The Light Factory

The works on view in Paris elaborate on Frecon’s continued attention to the qualities and dimensions of each of her chosen pigments—an exploration that offers limitless combinations and effects. The exhibition includes works that explore juxtapositions of different tones and sheens of one color, such as embodiment of red version 14 (2023), which employs a longstanding motif of the artist, in which she engages with combinations of four red earth pigments, in this case mars red, soforouge, venetian, and tuscan.

Two paintings on view, the larger-scaled bancha bamboo matcha (2025) and its smaller counterpart verona matcha (2024), employ the same compositional structure of an ovoid form comprising four irregularly measured quadrants resting in the lower half of a single vertical panel, a new format for Frecon.

Frecon has maintained a long-standing connection to Paris since the 1960s, where she spent three years enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, immersed in the study of paintings and architecture in museums and throughout the city, France, and Europe. The work and exhibitions she encountered in France became deeply formative to her practice and connect to a broader interest in how artists across time periods and cultures have used and sought to express light—or illumination—in their work.

During her continued travels in France and Europe, Frecon observed work ranging from the paleolithic cave paintings of the Dordogne region to frescoes and paintings by pre-Renaissance artists such as Coppo di Marcovaldo, Cimabue, and Duccio di Buoninsegna. She also learned from Diego Velázquez’s mastery of oil, and from the eternal reality in the works of Paul Cézanne, including his sustained series of paintings using the motif of Mont Sainte-Victoire in Provence.

While living in France, Frecon was inspired by the way light is marshalled and foregrounded in the cathedrals of Chartres and Amiens, among other Romanesque and Medieval architecture throughout the country. New manifestations of her ongoing five-color compositions, or “cathedral” series, are featured in the exhibition. Related by their compositional structure, these works vary profoundly from painting to painting in terms of the effects of their individual color combinations, as well as their distinct degrees of complexity in luminosity, scale, and surface variation.

As Frecon wrote in a notebook entry: “I had long been intrigued and mystified by Chartres Cathedral’s proportions and relationships, as well as the folk/pagan influences prevalent throughout it.... Because of its complexities and scale, I spent a lot of time walking around the outside studying the architecture and carved stone. Then I went inside. The light was coming through the stained glass windows, thus illuminating the colors from outside. I experienced how light could transform color by coming from behind it rather than striking the surface of the paint film, as I was used to seeing and employing as a painter.”

The exhibition takes its title from the poem “The Light Factory” by Marcella Durand, published in the forthcoming book of the same title which pairs poems by Durand with reproductions of paintings on paper by Frecon. The book marks the first collaboration between Frecon and Durand, who are mother and daughter. A selection of Frecon’s works on paper which feature in the publication is included in the exhibition.

These “brushwood” pieces include small-scale experiments by Frecon with brush strokes and haematite pigments. The structures are often determined by engaging the relationship between paint and support. Each sheet of paper used has its own innate character, properties, and irregular shape; any creases, holes, blemishes, and scale become an integral component of the watercolor. Yet, within Frecon’s practice, all works are considered part of the same unity, and one painting leads to another.

Frecon’s works remain resolutely nonreferential. The play of natural light on the paint materials heightens a visual experience that does not convey any pictorial subject but is instead a direct interaction with and manifestation of the reality of the painting itself. “Composition works with color, with surface, and with light to create an abstract visual reality that I wish to exist solely on its strength as art,” notes the artist.