The New Art Centre is delighted to announce an exhibition of new works by Swedish artist, Peter Frie, opening on 3 June 2023. Installed in the gallery at Roche Court Sculpture Park, a collection of eleven paintings and six bronze sculptures inspired by Salisbury Plain. Landscape and a sense of space have always been at the forefront of Frie’s vision. Peter Frie’s paintings are rooted in the long tradition of landscape painting, and especially in the way of depicting landscape as a powerfully charged mood. Frie does not reproduce views but paints memories.

The Swedish artist does not make any preliminary sketches on site, but instead paints in his studio in Båstad. Fundamentally, Frie works from memory and his paintings also prompt viewers to revisit their own memories and experiences of landsapes. The use of white fields, so characteristic of Peter Frie’s paintings, distort and distance the viewer from the subjects. He has been including these white spaces in his work in a variety of ways since the early 90s, and they return here in partly new expressions. The mood is one of peaceful contemplation. Using broad brushstrokes, sometimes a palette knife or narrow strokes, a speck of complementary colour, and characteristically unbridled brushwork, Frie brings to life an illusion of volume within the two-dimensional surface. The works are captivating and contemporary. In this new exhibition, Roche Court viewers will see Frie’s three-dimensional works in bronze, an aspect of his practice that began in 2009. They are sculptures with painterly characteristics, and their dark quality gives the effect of silhouetted trees on an evening landscape. The opening of this latest exhibition coincides with marking a 40-year relationship between the New Art Centre and Peter Frie, having first met in Basel in June 1983.