ABOUT JEAN ALEXANDER FRATER

Jean Alexander Frater works with painting as an object rather than a picture. She converses with the materiality of each piece in an effort to allow it to retain its voice. Treating the surface of the canvas like fabric, Frater folds to disrupt the forms she has painted on: the gestures of making are integral interests for Frater, seeing the ways that these different gestures create different meanings. The ripples that result are a refreshing approach to grids, stripes, gradients, often used in abstraction. The large woven paintings are intensely physical, and the smallest ones are experimental in form and color.

Frater received her BA in philosophy from the University of Dayton and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally from the Big Screen Project in New York to the Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Jean Alexander Frater was a recipient of the Working Artists Grant in 2014 and a BOLT resident at Chicago Artists Coalition from 2017 to 2018. She is the director of Material Exhibitions, a non profit artist project space.

This catalogue essay, written by Claudine Isé for Frater’s Softer series, delves into and explores the three dimensional nature of her work.