April Friges’ artwork uses basic photography principles to explore the boundaries and essence of photographic materials.  Her most recent abstract color prints and sculptures, CMY RGB and Untitled Color, explore the ways that photography is designed to function and materiality of the photograph itself. At its core Friges’ work is about photographic paper.  This amazing material is usually made invisible by photography; we see image on the paper, but never the fiber, plastic, silver, dye and gelatin that make the paper itself.

The images are not from a camera; Friges works in the darkroom with only photosensitive paper and light to develop a complex and imaginary language with the mediums in exploration.  Friges strives for colors in their purest form.  She is inspired by the subtractive primary colors; cyan, magenta, and yellow, which are used in the darkroom to create the additive primary colors; red, green and blue.  In total these colors are the basis on all color photography.

The paper is physically manipulated with plaster-like material to construct three-dimensional sculpted works that examine the intersection between image and object.  The photo paper which was designed to lay flat is now permanently curling, and folding.  In contrast, the primary flat works, chosen for the wall, reference the limitations of the photographic rectangular/square format and conventional framing.