Artist: Zipora Fried

Sean Kelly presents Trust Me, Be Careful, I Like Your Shoes, Zipora Fried’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. Bringing together four bodies of work; large works on paper, new intimately scaled drawings, ceramic sculptures, and a monumental hanging drawing, this exhibition highlights Fried’s mastery of mark-making and her continued exploration of the transformative, manipulative potential of form, color, and gesture. Simultaneously an overview of her oeuvre and a step into a new, dynamic phase of her career, the exhibition captures a shift in Fried’s practice toward heightened energy and a more liberated, expressive engagement with her materials.

Spanning drawing, installation, and sculpture Zipora Fried’s practice explores the tension between surface presence and subconscious depth. Layers of line, color, and material accumulate, dissolving interpretation in favor of a more visceral experience. Fried’s large drawings reflect a deliberate precision, characterized by structured compositions where each element is carefully arranged to create movement across the surface. The flawless execution of these works lends them an air of ennui, emphasizing their refined sophistication. Through strategic placement of angles and voids, Fried directs the viewer’s gaze, establishing a sense of balance. The drawings exude a deep, silent presence, revealing an internalized restraint that is both elegant and profound.

In contrast, Fried’s new smaller drawings shift towards unpredictability, embracing imperfection and spontaneity. Here, the stroke is unrestrained—raw, fluid, and instinctive. These works reject the rigidity found in her larger compositions, opting instead for a more expressive and immediate exploration of color contrasts and gestural freedom. The sculptural work, Miron, 2025 takes its’ inspiration from traditional Japanese Kokeshi dolls— simplified, top-heavy human figures that embody both playfulness and instability. With an exaggerated head and vague body, Fried’s sculpture suggests a quiet imbalance.

Fried’s hanging work, All I Thought and Forgot #3 (deep cobalt green), 2016, pushes the traditional boundaries of drawing into an architectural and sculptural realm. This work extends her deep, immersive engagement with color—devoting six months to a single hue, stripping the medium of drawing down to its essential elements. The persistent, labor-intensive application of mark-making over time results in a monumental work that, despite its scale, remains deeply vulnerable.

With Trust Me, Be Careful, I Like Your Shoes, Fried unveils a new direction in her artistic journey—one that embraces vitality, risk, and a departure from control. At this point in her career, she has mastered the stroke and employs it in a playful manner. These works are evidence of an artist fully in command of her medium and unafraid to surrender to the process, allowing intuition to guide her hand.

Zipora Fried studied at the Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO; Künstlerhaus Museum, Vienna, Austria, and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway amongst others. Her work is included in the Austrian Government’s Permanent Collection of Contemporary Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA and Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden. She currently lives and works in New York.