Fryd Frydendahl

Oddly Satisfying

The photograph of the foot makes me think of Jacques-André Boiffards mysterious photographs of toes which illustrated Georges Bataille’s article “The Big Toe” in the surrealist periodical Documents. On Boiffard’s image the toe appears out of the darkness all white with abnormalities and striped nails. In the article Bataille describes the big toe as that which differentiates man from animal. It is the organ which makes it possible for man to stand and have his head in the air, and that is the zone in which he can foster the ideal, the ideal to which the foot then paradoxically becomes the contrast. Bataille writes: “Human life entails, in fact, the rage of seeing oneself as a back and forth movement from refuse to the ideal, and from the ideal to refuse - a rage that is easily directed against an organ as base as the foot”.

”A back and forth movement from refuse to the ideal” is a pretty accurate description of Fryd’s work here, even though her ideal is never without flaws. From the base toe to the elaborately made-up face where body hair has been removed, where eyebrows are turned into thin drawn lines and lashes into flourishing ornaments adorning the glowing light blue canvases of the eyelids and where the lips are painted thick with red lipstick. The Q-tips and the cotton pads are played with as satirical props: Usually utensils for removing clumps of mascara or out-of-place concealer, here they appear as isolated esthetic objects, both revered and ironically toyed with as in the case where a model holds the cotton swab between her teeth like a rose.

Fryd claims to be indebted to her idol of all times, the surrealist artist Man Ray. In the interwar years in Paris he developed his own unique style in photography which included numerous photographs of aestheticized bodies and body parts. He was one of the main characters in working the classical surrealist theme: the animate in the inanimate and vice versa. One does detect the inspiration from the master in Fryd’s ongoing fascination with lashes and tears running down cheeks, but again Fryd is far from the interwar glamour of Man Ray. Man Ray’s universe is a universe where the skin and the body liquids always appear as something else. The skin appears all white and thus a photograph of a female torso and a similar marble sculpture make the Danish photo historian Lars Kiel Bertelsen ask: Who can tell which one is alive? Equally in Man Ray’s work lashes become calligraphic ornaments and tears precious pearls. In Fryd’s images, the artificial lashes are in the midst of being peeled off, revealing the thin natural hair. The skin stays carnal and mostly pink and sometimes shiny. Two close up portraits are even reddish and brownish. They make me think of one of the masters of theatrical photography, Cindy Sherman, her iconic filmstills (1977-1980) which halt a dramatic facial expression mid-scene and her later dark toned grotesque portraits. In Fryd’s images it is unclear whether it is the lightning or the color of the model’s face or the tone of the film which make her look like she is stepping out of a B-movie or magazine from the 1960ies. No matter, the cinematic glamour is ruptured anyway by the greasy stripes which run, or rather are applied, to her cheek.

As in her previous work, Fryd continues to explore the body as sculpture. Her nephew whom she has been photographing since he was a child has shed his baby face and has grown into a true Adonis. He is seen pressing his tongue against the blade of a knife. A mirror blank knife which reflects the one half of his face. Or does it? There is something in the reflection which makes one doubt it. Perhaps Fryd is using one of the tricks she sometimes employs to challenge photographic realism? And even though there are no pimples the photograph is far from the aestheticised portraits which Danish artist Trine Søndergaard is famous for. In Søndergaard’s series Untitled Reflections girls hold op mirrors in front of their faces, mirrors which cover the whole or half of the face. They are seen as a challenge to the belief that a portrait shows the essence of the portrayed. Fryd’s photograph of the nephew as a young man offers a less stoic but equally serious reflection on youth, time and the portrait as genre.

When I read about the Oddly Satisfying images and videos I am surprised that references to fetishism and voyeurism are so few. Is it because people are sick and tired of Freudian interpretations? Well, I at least am not capable of seeing repetitive in and out movements or liquid flowing without thinking about sex - not to speak of fetishism and voyeurism which are both integral to photography because of the fact that we are always looking at something but never able to actually touch it. Fryd has previously objected against Freudian interpretations of her work. But in this series she is obviously playing with sexual stereotypes, as when a roll of marzipan is being stuck into a mouth, or fruits are cut open or penetrated with fingers, not to speak of the favorite fantasy of at least Danish school teachers in the 1970ies: the Coca Cola bottle. In Fryd’s version the shaken carbon dioxide creates an explosion when the lid goes off and the sticky brown liquid splashes all over and then lies in a white puddle around the bottle. That’s Freudianism in your face but at the same time I cannot help to think of all the surrealist experiments. There is something sculptural to the way the liquid covers the top of the bottle as if it was made of Polyurethane foam and the way the liquid creates a fantasy figure on the ground. Which again reminds me of all the high-art revolt against realism in all kinds of action painting. Not least when hanging on the walls of a white cube.