Exhibition - Lucy Fradkin: Good Morning Alice And Other Stories

Lucy Fradkin’s Good Morning Alice and Other Stories, refers to the name Icema adopted temporarily during her first years in New York—a more common name in the States, but also the name of her oldest daughter. Every morning at work, Icema was greeted by this loaded pseudonym, a reminder of her estrangement not only from her family but also from her sense of identity. In Good Morning Alice, Fradkin exhibits a selection of paintings depicting herself and Simms, Icema and the Simms family, and a series of mixed-race couples dedicated to Richard and Mildred Loving, the couple whose legal ordeals decriminalized interracial marriage in the United States. While Icema’s World pays homage to the woman whose perseverance facilitated the Simms’ life in New York, Good Morning Alice highlights as well the legislative legacy that allowed Fradkin and Simms to share the life they do now.
 
Influenced by art historical traditions such as Indian and Persian miniatures, Fradkin’s paintings compress depth, minimize contour, and embrace decoration. Her frontally oriented figures frequently occupy domestic spaces, standing on floors that are flush with the picture plane, privileging pattern over perspective. The artist regularly integrates collage into her paintings, culling mid-century domestic objects from sources contemporary to their production: department store catalogues depicting their wares in sepia tones, field guides illustrating and taxonomizing species in intricate detail. Fradkin maintains not only the vintage of these applied elements, but also the scale in which they were originally printed, charting her domestic spaces through their placement regardless of perspectival verisimilitude. Within these parameters, Fradkin elasticizes space just as she flattens it, rendering depth elusive and contingent.