Three of Cups

January 8 - February 14, 2025

Opening Reception: January 8, 6pm - 9pm

Mariel Rolwing Montes, Alex Schmidt, Allie Taylor

FRISSON is pleased to present our winter painting exhibition. Bringing together three artists, Mariel Rolwing Montes, Alex Schmidt and Allie Taylor, the show is conceptualized as a joyful union of three distinct painting practices which is embodied in the title, Three of Cups. Drawn from a card in the minor arcana of the Tarot, Three of Cups symbolizes festivities, collaborative spirit and building new connections through community. Unlike the major arcana, which deals with dramatic and overt divinations, the minor arcana focuses on the subtle and the mundane. While seemingly less monumental, it is in the daily and the minute where the subtleties of life play out. 

The canvases vary in scale, figuration, and stretching techniques, celebrating the wide range of possibilities that exist within painting. 

Mariel Rolwing Montes (b. Brooklyn, NY) received her MFA in Fine Arts from Hunter College in Spring 2025. Solo exhibitions include Good Heavens with Blade Study in New York and A Tablecloth at High Altitude, an online solo show with Hyacinth Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include Ver La Oscuridad, presented with Crísis Gallery in Lima. Recent publications include New American Paintings. She has shown work in group exhibitions in New York, Lima, Mexico City, and Copenhagen.

Alex Schmidt (b. Chicago, IL) works across performance, painting, text, social-engagement, and set design. They have held solo presentations at Leslie-Lohman Museum (New York, NY), 21st Street Projects for Critical Practices Inc (New York, NY), ENTRANCE Gallery (Marfa, TX), and Olympia (New York, NY), among others. They have performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Swiss Institute, MoMA PS1, the Kitchen, BOFFO, Blade Study, Galerie Timonier, Duplex NYC, OLYMPIA, Essex Flowers, Abrons Art Center, and PERFORMA, among others. Schmidt was a Shandaken: Storm King Artist in Residency (2025), a Whitney Museum Independent Study Program Elaine G. Weitzen Studio Fellow (2024-2025), a 2024 Mayer Foundation grant recipient (2024), and a Ruth Stanton Scholar (2020-2023). Schmidt’s work has been reviewed by the New Yorker, Vogue, Dazed Magazine, Office Magazine, Paper, New York Magazine, and The Guardian. They have written for The Whitney Review, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Impulse Magazine, and The Public Review. Schmidt teaches at Hunter College, where they received their MFA in 2024.

Allie Taylor (b. Portland, Oregon) is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Taylor’s practice engages abstract gestural painting as a means of resisting fixed logic and embracing uncertainty. Their paintings draw on imagination and dissociated imagery, using the medium’s slippery material qualities to evade stable interpretation. They received a BA from Columbia University, a BS from UC Berkeley, and an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College and Bard College.