Honor Fraser

Honor Fraser is pleased to present a series of discussions that will be hosted at the gallery throughout this summer and fall.

The first talk, titled “Is Conviction in Painting Possible?” will start at 4 pm on Saturday May 23rd and is a panel discussion on the current status of contemporary painting. The talk will aim to examine the intrinsic challenge in theorizing about contemporary painting, based not only on studio practice but also through writing. The starting point of the conversation is a question framed by Ed Schad, asking what is it that inspires and compels a contemporary artist to take up the brush and paint. The question is formed from a passage written by Jens Hoffmann in an essay about Unwin's work. Hoffmann writes: “Though not without similarities to others of her generation and immediately preceding, she epitomizes the freedom of emerging at a time when influence – whether painterly, filmic, literary, or personal – is a flat spectrum to be employed with ease and where process or the physical act of painting is nonchalantly explored.” Schad is curious to have the panelists explore the idea that if one's approach to media and the act of painting is nonchalant, where does conviction come from?

The panel will be moderated by Ed Schad and will include Andrew Berardini, Jens Hoffmann, Phoebe Unwin and Liat Yossifor. This discussion marks the first in a series of talks at the gallery that will bring together artists, curators, writers and critics in an environment where an organic dialogue can stem from a central topic or designated theme.


Ed Schad is the Curatorial Associate at the Broad Art Foundation as well as a freelance writer and critic based in Los Angeles. He runs the L.A. based blog www.icallitORANGES.blogspot.com.

Andrew Berardini is a writer living in Los Angeles. He is the Los Angeles editor for Mousse Magazine, Milan and an Assistant Curator at the Armory Center for the Arts. Berardini's writing has appeared in Frieze, Artforum, and Art Review, amongst others. As a curator, he is currently working on original projects with Dave Muller, Bruce Nauman, Raymond Pettibon and Yoshua Okon.

Jens Hoffmann is the Director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of Arts in San Francisco where he also directs the Capp Street Project artists-in residency program. He also writes and curates extensively.

Phoebe Unwin is a painter who lives and works in London. She studied at Newcastle University, Newcastle (1998-2002) and the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2003-2005). In 2008 she had a solo exhibition titled Feelings and Other Forms, at Wilkinson, London; her second solo show at the gallery. In 2007, she had her first solo museum exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery, Buckinghamshire, UK. Her first solo exhibition in the US titled Making an Outside Space Theirs opens May 23rd here at Honor Fraser.

Liat Yossifor graduated with an MFA from the University of California, Irvine (2002), and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (1996). Yossifor has shown her work in solo exhibitions at various venues, such as: The Tender Among Us at the Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; The Dawning of an Aspect at Susanne Vielmetter Gallery, LA, CA; The Black Paintings at Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel.