FRIBOURG.- With Spring / Summer 25 Friart is dedicating a Man- nerist-inspired exhibition to two young artists who started out in Fribourg. Azize Ferizi and Jeremy explore, through painting, the relationships between the body and its image. Drawing on investigations into colour, brushstrokes and composition, these two artists have elaborated a visual approach that takes the image back into the realm of artifice.

AZIZE FERIZI

“When we imitate, we transfer not only the demands for creative activity but also the responsibility for the action from ourselves to another.” -- George Simmel, Philosophy of Fashion, 1905

Integrating the violence of the scene, the gaze and the pose into the general economy of the image, Azize Ferizi’s work is founded in a structural approach to painting and clothing. Within this, fashion serves as a model for notions of belonging as the expression of a hierarchical society.

Her exhibition is made up of two ensembles. Outside the curtain, the motif of a bust is repeated across eighteen paintings on paper, with a series of different patterns cut. Reminiscent of preparatory work for a collection, the palette draws from a swatch of 110 colours developed by the artist for the work. Blocks of colour appear side by side in each painting, without any mixing taking place. The figure seen from the back both resists representation and offers itself to abstraction. The curves that form the body impose themselves on it to create a sovereign plane on which the aesthetic is constructed.

Inside a cage of curtains serving as a protective veil, clothing is used to reference typologies of people. The typologies are made of canvases freed from the surface of the painting. By reducing the textile pieces to their essence, the work forces the gaze to focus on the obvious. Clothes take on the weight of absent bodies, subjected to the authority of relationships of domination.

We often think of emancipation in terms of resistance to norms but for some, conforming resolves the ques- tion of one’s singularity by evacuating it. By positively re-evaluating the mimetic gesture, the artist opens the way for the body to something other than its own agency.

Azize Ferizi (1996, Fribourg, CH) is a Swiss-Kosovan artist based in Paris, who graduated from HEAD–Genève and studied at School of Visual Arts, New York City. Influenced by clothing and uniforms, her work combines painting and sculpture, treating canvas as fabric to construct forms reminiscent of garments. She explores colour theory through its symbolism and societal context, using it as a lexicon to convey stereotypical personas. Her recent exhibitions include Exo Exo, Paris (2024), Ilenia, London (2023), Lovay Fine Arts, Geneva (2023) and Cherish, Geneva (2020).

JEREMY

A lost soldier strikes a pose, second guessing the freeze-frame like a seasoned pro. Jeremy’s new series of paintings introduces a cast of robots without qualities. They come into being in search of authenticity, trapped in their respective fictional worlds. Their retro-futuristic forms ooze an outdated fantasy very much at odds with the processing speed of a present they necessarily measure themselves up against. One robot steals a drop of falling rain to simulate a tear. In the paintings, the narrative intent of the climatic expression of feelings comes straight out of melodrama. The easy artificiality of the landscapes places us firmly in the interior world of these automatons.

Each image shows the pivotal moment of a story revealed. Genesis, close-ups, climax and resolution duly acknowledge narration’s industrial character. As the train passes by and the seasons change, the spectacle emerges from the common melting pot of ancient and modern times. Disaster is never far away.

Giving way to the power of illustration, classical form sides with simplification. The detail of the execution of armour or hair contrasts with big background sections in single colours. Pure colour takes advantage of the ornament of an apple, as if a forbidden fruit. The aesthetic is built on the contrast of both exaggerated concentration and neglect.

No easy way to settle on an object for your visual plea- sure here. Staring into an artificial eye, the emptiness felt is only equal to the robot’s love. From the viewer’s perspective, an insoluble conflict arises between the alienation of the subjects in the painting and the objecthood of the works.Absorption is itself objectified by the painter. In a complicit pleasure, he offers up the gaze on a platter for a complete alienation effect.

Jeremy (1996, Fribourg, CH) is an artist living and working in Switzerland, who completed his studies at HEAD–Genève. Through his painting and drawing prac- tice, he explores transformation and metamorphosis, depicting chimerical figures that blend influences from classical and mythological painting with popular comic-like imagery. His visual language is both emo- tionally evocative and playfully subversive, inviting the viewer into a world where absurdity and beauty come together. His most recent solo exhibitions include Peres Projects, Seoul (2024), Berlin (2023) and WallStreet, Fribourg (2021).