Image 1 of 1
Jean Alexander Frater Biography
Jean Alexander Frater’s practice explores the material possibilities of painting, bringing together histories, traditions, and conceptual frameworks through works that are both visceral and formally rigorous. By folding, layering, cutting, and manipulating canvas like fabric, she transforms gestural marks into disruptions of form and meaning, developing a visual language shaped by ripples, grids, gradients, and stripes. Her woven and folded works move between large-scale physical presence and more intimate studies in color and structure, continually testing the boundary between painting and sculpture.
Frater holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Dayton. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, Images Festival in Toronto, Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, and Aspect/Ratio in Chicago. She is also the director of Material, a nonprofit artist project space in Chicago, extending her commitment to experimentation and dialogue within contemporary art.
“I am interested in painting as a site of physical and conceptual transformation, where the canvas can be folded, cut, and reconfigured to carry a presence beyond image. Through surface, structure, and gesture, I try to let the material itself generate new meaning.”
– Jean Alexander Frater
