AFTERNOON OF A FAUN
Sophie Friedman-Pappas, Ramsey Alderson, and Fred Lonidier
May 30 - June 27
PRESS RELEASE
One time when I was a kid, I had to leave a sleepover early because my friend and I watched Freddy vs Jason, and I was so freaked out by what I saw that my dad had to pick me up. Earlier that day, we only had only made it through about 10 minutes because I was so horrified I could hardly look at the screen that my friend was glued to. His mom walked by his room, and I think she could see the state I was in. She took pity on me and told my friend Josh to turn it off. I don't think she would have done it otherwise because Josh's parents were chill, and we were tweens who grew up in the 21st Century, so they assumed a certain level of desensitization. But I couldn't sleep that night and had to walk into Josh's parents room and ask them to call my parents to pick me up, which I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment about at the time. I only lived across the street, so my dad came over and walked me back home. When we got home, my dad wanted to calm me down, so he told me to imagine the behind the scenes of the movie: the lights just out of the frame, the person behind the camera, the makeup on actors faces, the actors’ lives off camera, people who probably had spouses and kids, the director sitting in the chair analyzing the production, and all of the random people standing around drinking coffee or looking at the ground, not paying attention to what was going on. We did this for about a half hour, and then I think he got tired and bored and decided it was time for me to lay down on my own with the lights out and try to fall asleep.
ARTIST BIOS
SOPHIE FRIEDMAN-PAPPAS
Sophie Friedman-Pappas (b. 1995, New York) divides her time between New York and Los Angeles. She received her MFA from UCLA in 2024. Friedman-Pappas has held solo and two-person exhibitions at Paul Soto, New York, NY; MAK Center for Art & Architecture, Los Angeles; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York, NY; and Alyssa Davis Gallery (organized by Octagon), New York; and has participated in group exhibitions at Hans Goodrich, Chicago; Paul Soto, New York; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; and Soft Opening, London, among others. Friedman-Pappas is currently included in ‘Greater New York 2026’ at MoMA PS1.
RAMSEY ALDERSON
Ramsey Alderson lives and works in Los Angeles. Past solo exhibitions include D'or, Tiffany's Door, Los Angeles (2025); Sleep, Commercial Street, Los Angeles (2023) and Heaven on Earth, Gaylord Fine Arts, Los Angeles (2023). Group exhibitions include I did it myself, Amity, Los Angeles (2026); Art Isn't Fair, Clementine Seedorf, Cologne, Germany (2024); Summer Group Show, Soldes, Los Angeles (2024); and Sex is Gay. Part Deux, Guzzler, Rosanna, Australia (2021). This year he will be included in group exhibitions at Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; and Timeshare, Los Angeles. He is currently attending the Graduate Fine Arts program at ArtCenter in Pasadena.
FRED LONIDIER
Fred Lonidier lives and works in San Diego, California. Lonidier's work deals with the sociological possibilities of photography applied to social change and has been exhibited at the Houston Center for Photography, the Oakland Museum, the Long Beach Museum, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Focus Gallery, the Kitchen, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, the Los Angeles Institute for Contemporary Art, the Whitney in New York, and the Friends of Photography in Carmel. He has also had exhibits in a number of union halls such as the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, ACTWU, SEIU, CWA, and Gallery 1199 of the NYC Hospital Workers Union. He is represented by Michael Benevento Gallery and Maxwell Graham.
WORKS LIST
Fantasy, 2026
Ramsey Alderson
Oil, cotton, linen, metal, folding table, lamp charcoal, colored pencil, graphite, acrylic, pastel, glassine, paper
Vacation, 2026
Ramsey Alderson Oil, cotton, metal, cardboard, lamp, charcoal, colored pencil, ink, acrylic chalk, graphite, paper
Deltille-d Wall's Necessary Anachronism 2, 2023
Sophie Friedman-Pappas
Inverted camera obscura (homeade projector), mixed media
Runtime: 10 minutes
Model Shoot, 1972
Fred Lonidier
Video
Runtime: 7 minutes 49 seconds
Exhibition curated by Antonio Bever