Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Katelyn Ledford. Known for virtuosic trompe-l’oeil and dark humor, Ledford constructs images where artifice, vulnerability, and bravado collide. Working exclusively with oil and acrylic on canvas, she renders wood grain, masking tape, lace, and denim with the charged aura of stage props. In her hands, illusion becomes performance.
In this new body of work, Ledford depicts the backs of painting stretchers as meticulously rendered spaces where confession and composure blur. Across these surfaces, phrases like let’s go back or free are painted with deliberate clarity, yet their meaning shifts as what first reads as material truth reveals itself as a performance of authenticity. Ledford’s realism understands its own artifice; it translates sincerity the way the internet simulates intimacy, through repetition, exaggeration, and distortion.
What makes her practice potent is the tension between devotional craft and the awareness that both painting and personhood are acts of construction. Her trompe-l’oeil labor becomes a metaphor for maintaining the self amid the constant pressure to appear real. Each image flirts with undoing, reaching for sincerity so hard it threatens to fall apart with a manic theatricality that feels both brave and overexposed. The humor here isn’t relief but pressure: slapstick leaking into pathos, camp into confession. These are paintings that know they’re being watched and respond in kind.
Katelyn Ledford (b. Austin, TX) lives and works in Jersey City, NJ. She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at M+B, Los Angeles; Long Story Short, New York; Aishonanzuka, Hong Kong; DUVE, Berlin, and Dia Hora, Athens.