blank is pleased to announce Shadows over the bright and darkened lands of the earth, a solo exhibition by Zoë Paul at Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street in London.

The artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Shadows over the bright and darkened lands of the earth is a series of three large-scale bead curtains made from handmade stoneware, terra cotta, and porcelain depicting the forms of three naked figures suspended in motion. From 2020 - 2021, the installation was exhibited at MoMA for The Modern Window series, curated by Jocelyn Miller.

About the works, Miller writes: ‘Zoë Paul’s beaded curtain installations incorporate styles of picture-making from across history—ancient cave paintings, Byzantine iconography, classical Greek vases, as well as the digital pixels that compose virtual reality. Her work is partially inspired by the curtains hung in doorways in the Mediterranean, which allow easy flow between public and private spaces. Ambient light and the motion of passersby make the depicted figures appear to come to life, with a kind of flickering that resembles early film animation. The beads serve a function similar to that of computer pixels, coalescing to produce a triptych of figures—in the artist’s words, a “celebratory, spiritual evocation of bodily representation, focusing on musculature, strength, dynamism, and the spiritually erotic.”’