Frida Kahlo Body Cast Featured in Opening Exhibit at New Frey Norris Gallery

Posted on Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 5:00 PM

Frida Kahlo painted this cast after a near-death accident.

Frey Norris Contemporary + Modern will open its new gallery in downtown San Francisco tomorrow with an opening reception for two exhibits, one of them unusual for a smaller space that's not a museum.

"Exultation: Sex, Death and Madness in Eight Surrealist Masterworks" is just what it sounds like. It's a collection of paintings by the masters organized around a central theme.

"These shows usually take two to five years to plan," says Raman Frey, "as we make a point of purchasing and owning most of the art on display."

"Exultation" includes works by Leonora Carrington, Paul Delvaux, Frida Kahlo, Wifredo Lam, Wolfgang Paalen, Yves Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, and Remedios Varo.

The other exhibit is "Pangea: Art at the Forefront of Cultural Convergence." Eight artists are also included in this portion. They are Rina Banerjee, Lionel Bawden, Zhong Biao, Sherin Guirguis, Dana Harel, Kate Eric, Ranu Mukherjee, and Laurel Roth.

Frey Norris' new space is at 161 Jessie at New Montgomery. It has 5,100 square feet of space on a single, ground-floor level. Its former space at 456 Geary, which closed in December, had about 3,100 square feet of space that were spread over four levels.

Frey says he and Wendi Norris hired Gensler architects to design the new space. The desginer was Jeff Henry, Frey says, who also designed the SFMOMA gift shop and a number of art and art-related spaces.

Frey says that throughout the firm there exists a love and appreciation for art. He says artists represented by Frey Norris have had their work shown at Gensler's San Francisco office.

The receptions for "Exultation" and "Pangea" start at 4 p.m. Saturday at Frey Norris.