Magdalena Suarez Frimkess visual language is of a singular, interpersonal creation, rising out of the rumbling debris of pop culture and the most historically elemental imagery. According to Suarez Frimkess, this aesthetic is what continues to drive her practice as her freeform depictions of culturally sensitive chronologies act as a spontaneous agent for new dramas and mythos to emerge. Some of her most poignant works contemporarily articulate reimagined tales from a pre-Columbian world. She reworks these narratives into new humors, frustrations or delights for her eclectic cast of characters to reenact for the viewer, whether they are placed onto three-dimensional hand-glazed ceramics, or a torn page from a working notebook.

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess is currently the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The first museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s career and featuring a selection of her drawings and ceramic works from the 70’s to the present.

Together, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess and Michael Frimkess have produced an extensive collaborative body of work since they first began working together in 1963. Their decades long partnership initially began as a collaboration of convenience that married their respective practices. Michael Frimkess’ masterful ceramics nod to traditions within Greek, Chinese, and Indigenous American antiquity — lending themselves as a canvas that Magdalena Suarez Frimkess paints fills with her elaborate glazed compositions.