Lurking Lizard, 2022
Ed 1/2 + 1 AP
Archival print on aluminum mount, cotton canvas
116 x 126 cm
Ahead of her upcoming solo exhibition, Alina Frieske presents Lurking Lizard, a work focused on the motif of a hand. The image is framed by a printed cotton fabric, pointing to Frieske’s unique montage process and her continuous extension of a single image.
Frieske’s practice exists at the intersection between photography and painting, used to investigate the representation of the human body in a networked environment. By practicing collage techniques, she explores the multiplicity of photographic information stored as part of what constitutes our virtual identities and the impact of digital technologies on our daily lives.
A varied collection of images sourced from the unlimited flow of mobile phone uploads on social networks is the primary material for Lurking Lizard. Frieske’s process begins with cutting photographs into ever smaller fragments that serve as a color palette and are used as brushstrokes in a digital composition. In a painterly process of layering, small cut-outs of these pictures are multiplied, stretched and overlaid to form new figures and surroundings.
It is the tension between stripping away and covering up online traces that is articulated in the layering process and in the digital composites. In Frieske’s work, fleeting moments documented by strangers are prismatically collaged into a collective portrait.
