Overview
Laura Fritz combines an immersive installation and video-based work for her contribution to the APEX exhibition series. Working closely with the architectural space that APEX inhabits, Fritz has created a site-specific installation that responds to various points of corners, walls, and the floor, taking signals from furniture that allude to tables, cabinets, or other ergonomic forms. Juxtaposing these controlled spaces, Fritz brings in natural elements and forms, particularly through her video and light pieces referencing the movements of bees, birds, cats, moths, and butterflies. Fritz’s own research, dedicated to such seemingly disparate subjects as architectural sites and the motions of bees, forms a strange and intriguing marriage in her work, opening up questions of what defines the natural and made worlds—where do science and superstition meet, and how do we negotiate our constructed realities to that of the unknown?
Based in Portland, Fritz creates installations noted for the psychological interplay between space and objects. She has exhibited her work nationally, including at the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; Reed College, Portland; SOIL, Seattle; Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, New Jersey; University of Oregon; and the Couture Stipend Series solo show at New American Art Union in Portland. Fritz is also the recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts (2014). She holds a BFA from Drake University and also attended Pacific Northwest College of Art.
APEX is an ongoing series of exhibitions of Northwest-based artists, curated by Grace Kook-Anderson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art. The APEX exhibition series is supported in part by The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Endowments for Northwest Art and the Exhibition Series Sponsors.
