April Friges

April Friges’ art practice is about looking at photographic conventions and creating alternate methods by blurring the boundaries of digital and analog media. She considers how ideologies of photography range in definition from person to person, and how that translation differs today in both physical and immaterial form. Her photographic works comprise of large-scale, unique, black and white and color darkroom prints. Her images are not from a camera; Friges works in the darkroom with only photosensitive paper and light to develop a complex and imaginary language with the mediums in exploration. The paper is physically manipulated to construct three-dimensional sculpted works that examine the intersection between image and object. The site-specific gallery lighting create shadows from these objects, relating to the origin of how the works are created. Once off the walls, the pieces are often rolled up and flattened, thus creating a body of work in flux every time the work is exhibited.

April Friges was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and in 2010 received her MFA in studio art from The University of California, Irvine. Friges lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she is the assistant professor of the BFA photography program at Point Park University.