Petra FreyGlas–Licht

What do we see here? A shimmering and glittering of lights and reflections that combine into a hovering ring before an infinite space. With her painting, Petra Frey moves in in-between worlds, between reality and illusion, representation and abstraction. Glass is her subject, the source material of her painting, to which she has devoted herself consistently for years. Glass is many things: viscous and crystalline, fragile and resistant, cold and hard; it appears light and yet can become as heavy as stone. At the same time the material invites metaphorical and spiritual charging. Not so with Petra Frey: she has moved from the depiction of splintered fragments to refractions, individual views and overall representations. In doing so she favours a free play of mirrorings and reflections that dissolve into space. Her depictions emerge from a mostly dark ground that allows her this play of reflection and transparency, extending to unusual phenomena of light. As Petra Frey thus liberates the light, as it were, the glass objects she depicts are dematerialised by her painting process, almost as though she were releasing the glass from its objecthood in order to transform it into pure light.

Exhibition:
Galerie der Kreissparkasse Esslingen-Nürtingen, 3/6 – 25/7/2025