Fabien Fryns Fine Art Gallery

Bio

Facial Recognition is Fabien Fryns Fine Art's first show in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, and future programming will primarily focus on Western and Asian contemporary art. Fabien Fryns is a born art dealer and collector with an eye for emerging talent. Originally from Belgium, he has been actively involved in the art world since 1986 from collecting art works as a teenager, to owning F2 Gallery in Beijing (2004-2012) and Fabien Fryns Fine Art in Los Angeles (2006-2012) and Marbella (1994-2004), to advising collectors and institutions worldwide.


Artists

- Francis Annan Affotey
- Ángeles Agrela
- Alic Brock
- Yukimasa Ida
- Victoria Nunley
- Julian Pace
- Walter Robinson
- Adam Parker Smith
- Zhang Ji

Artists Information

Francis Annan Affotey was born in 1985 in Accra, Ghana. He graduated from Accra’s Ghanatta College of Art and Design, winning three of the school’s five top awards — for still life, imagination and composition, and abstract drawing, later joining the Revolution Art Organization and the African Young Artist Organization. The portraits of the Ghanaian artist are bold portrayals of his subjects’ inner worlds—captured through their expressive eyes, accentuated forms, and rich colorings, painted in his characteristically realistic style heightened through the use of electric hues against more seductive ombrés. His fascination with the unique experiences of his family, classmates, celebrities and models is expressed through their powerful expressions and their body language.

Born in Úbeda, Spain, in 1966, Ángeles Agrela currently lives and works in Granada. Her paintings are a refutation to the canons of art history, inserting bold female figures into a dialogue that was often solely male. Seeing her career recently revived, Agrela has been granted various awards including the BMW Painting Prize in 2015, the Plastic Arts Prize of the Regional Government of Cantabria in 2010 among others.

Born in 1992 in Dayton Ohio, Alic Brock is a self-taught artist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Working with ultra-precision in his airbrush technique, Brock “chops and screws” his subject matter, taking iconic images that he finds online and manipulating them first with computer software and then in real-life, skewing his stencils to create an enchanting uneasiness in his paintings. Alic favors pop-culture icons like basketball players and musicians, but he doesn’t shy away from art-historic subjects.

Yukimasa Ida, born in 1990 in Totori, Japan, obtained his masters in oil painting from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2019. He now lives and works in Tokyo. Blurring the distinction between figuration and abstraction, he creates ambiguous faces by applying oil paint thickly to enormous canvases. He has exhibited across Japan, and abroad in Europe at spaces including Perrotin Gallery (Paris, France), Fabien Fryns Fine Art (London, U.K.), and Kaikai Kiki Gallery (Tokyo, Japan). Ida won the CAF Special Jury Award (2016), and the Arts in Marunouchi Grand Prix (2015).

Born in 1991 in New Jersey, Victoria Nunley earned her MFA from Boston University in 2018. These almost cartoon-like canvases place women front-and-center, often tomboys happy to enjoy the benefits of once-male privilege.

Julian Pace was born in 1988 in Seattle, Washington. His pop-historical portraits reflect his experiences living in Florence, where he was based for six years, and New York, where he currently resides. A completely self-taught artist, his world is populated by behemoths of art history, pop culture and sports. These drawings are made instantly recognizable not by their face of the celebrity but by Pace’s entirely unique approach to coloration and perspective.

Walter Robinson was born in 1950 in Wilmington, DE. He grew up in Tulsa, OK, and moved to New York City to attend college at Columbia University. In 1973 he co-founded Art-Rite magazine, which featured covers designed by artists and was distributed free of charge in New York galleries. At the same time, he began working at Art in America magazine, where he compiled its monthly art newsletter and later became the magazine’s News Editor. In the late 1970s, Robinson began painting the pulp romance imagery he is known for, showing his work in galleries in New York’s East Village and internationally. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Robinson’s work, with recent shows in Paris and New York.

Adam Parker Smith, born in California in 1978, graduating with a MFA from Tyler School of Art and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, now lives and works in Brooklyn. Working primarily as 3-dimensionally, Smith creates faux objects by appropriating from mass culture or others’ art works. Smith has exhibited work nationally and internationally, and has been written about in Art in America, Artforum, the New York Times and the New Yorker.

Born in 1978 in Shandong, Zhang Ji graduated from the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2008 with a master’s degree in Mural Painting. He currently lives and works in Beijing, and has been exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions, including Art Basel Hong Kong, Van de Weghe, (2017);Fiac, Van de Weghe, Paris (2017); Asia Now, Fabien Fryns Fine Art, Paris (2017); Between Friends, Boers Li Gallery, Beijing (2017); Art Basel Miami, Van de Weghe, Miami (2016); The Skin of Truth, Fabien Fryns Fine Art, Temple, Beijing (2016). Zhang Ji’s work can be found in the collections of Dr Uli Sigg, DSL Paris, and numerous prestigious private collectors worldwide.