Curatorial notes
Alfred Freddy Krupa made this drawing on paper, titled 'Me on the riverside'. There is a feeling of immediacy, a real directness to how Krupa makes a mark. He uses a kind of shorthand to capture a whole scene in just a few lines. I like the way the shapes are so open, they’re not trying to trick you into thinking they’re real, but neither are they completely abstract – you can just about figure out what they are, or what they might be. See the way he's drawn the trees, with the scribble on the branches – it's like a code for 'tree', but a code that makes sense to us. There’s a bit of Cy Twombly in the loose, scribbled line, and maybe also Philip Guston with the boldness of the dark marks. I'd say this piece shows us that art is always a conversation.