Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen, opened in our Chelsea location on May 13. Curated by the widely acclaimed filmmaker Joel Coen, the exhibition showcases approximately 45 of Friedlander’s photographs that span the range of his 60+ year career, bringing into the equation many lesser-known images. Rather than focusing on a single subject or period, Coen’s selection concentrates on Friedlander’s singular approach to composition and evidences an unexpected affinity between the two artists, both of whose work explores the sly power of images.
Friedlander, Coen, and McDormand, long admirers of each other’s work, met in the spring of 2022 at Friedlander’s home in Upstate New York. During the day-long visit the artists studied hundreds of photographs, which ultimately led to the selection represented in the exhibition and the accompanying publication. This group of images is focused on compositions that are dense and off-kilter, often bisected by stop signs and utility poles, car doors and windshields, trees and shadows.

“As a filmmaker, I liked the idea of creating a sequence that would highlight Lee’s unusual approach to framing—his splitting, splintering, repeating, fracturing, and reassembling elements into new and impossible compositions”. – Joel Coen

“I was present when these two guys met for the first time and observed a familiarity that comes from their lifetimes of singular and eccentric visions… Neither would naturally refer to himself as an Artist. Yet they have honed their crafts over decades of practice, and those of us who cannot see the way they see have no other way to describe what they do but “art.” – Frances McDormand

Concurrent with the exhibition at Luhring Augustine, Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen will also be on view at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco (May 6 – June 24, 2023). Both presentations will be accompanied by a special projection created by Coen, which sequences Friedlander’s images in surprising and revealing ways.

In connection with the project, Fraenkel Gallery has published a new hardcover book with an expanded selection of 70 works, an introduction by Coen, and an afterword by the actor Frances McDormand. The publication is available on both galleries’ websites.
In his selection of 70 photographs by Lee Friedlander, Joel Coen focuses on Friedlander’s beautifully strange sense of composition.
In Friedlander’s unmistakable style, images are off kilter and visually dense, bisected and carved by stop signs and utility poles, store windows and reflections, car doors and windshields or shadows and trees.
Featuring work spanning more than 60 years, the book includes selections from some of Friedlander’s most celebrated series, including The American Monument, America by Car, The Little Screens and others, arranged to draw connections between form and composition rather than subject. In an afterword, renowned actor Frances McDormand describes the bond between the two artists. Coen and Friedlander “hold mysteries that feel a bit connected,” she writes. “They both capture and fill frames with sometimes simple and other times chaotically elaborate images that cause us all to wonder.”