GROUND LEVEL, GALLERY 4
MEXICO, BORN 1988
LIVES AND WORKS IN GERMANY
PROJECT
Frieda Toranzo Jaeger’s autofelatio 2018 is a multi-part painting that fans out from a central canvas, referring to art-historical precedents of polyptychs and folding paintings primarily seen in Medieval and Byzantine altarpieces, but simultaneously evoking a mechanical crank.
The imagery – almost a disintegration of the parts of a vehicle – evokes automotive mechanism, as well as organic and bodily forms. Through depictions of engine parts, exhaust pipes, a shell, a male driver caught by a traffic camera on his phone, and decorative patterns and flourishes, the painting draws associations between automation, gender and sexuality.
Toranzo Jaeger leads our attention to the sensuality of the surface in automotive and art objects, creating tension between the realms of the interior and exterior, the public and private. In this work, the loop of autoeroticism and the potential of infinite mechanisation is at play. The exaggerated size of the artist’s signature, emblazoned boldly on one of the canvases, parodies painting’s traditionally male authorship and reclaims that space for a queer female voice.
ABOUT
Solo exhibitions include Fantasies of Autonomy, Arcadia Missa, London, United Kingdom (2019); Deep Adaptation, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (2019); Autofelatio, High Art, Paris, France (2018); Choque Cultural, Lulu, Mexico City, Mexico (2018); Die Windschutzcheibe, Reena Spaulings, New York, USA (2017).
Recent group exhibitions include The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue, Kunstwerke, Berlin, Germany (2019) and Frac Lorraine, Metz, France (2020); Paint, also known as blood, MoMA, Warsaw, Poland (2019); and City Prince/sses, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2019).