- Venue
- Rowing
- Location
- London
There is a roll of material sliding off a wall. It appears that this has been stopped from completely unravelling by a square piece of marble. The marble, belonging to Maria Lund, had previously acted as a fan. Placed on top of the material, a television monitor plays a loop of people on the streets of New York trying to read a tongue twister to camera. The words get tangled each time and the video cuts to an abstract shot with a buzzer sound reminiscent of a game-show. In front of the monitor, a lump of clay has been moulded into something intangible.
On a second wall, several sticks have been moulded into walking sticks; walking sticks have been cast into more walking sticks. A black and white photograph of a man holding a walking stick slides off a board leaning on a wall. A green cabbage stem comes out of the photograph, acting as its shadow, except this is the thing that is really present in the room.
A pair of yellow Adidas sneakers wait by the door.
On other walls are photographs of objects being covered in clay, whilst objects appear around the room as ghosts of the objects that they are portraying.
A large piece of red material is draped from the ceiling to the floor. The material acts as both a backdrop for a stage and a place of disguise.
Like the wizard of Oz who meekly sits behind a screen and presents a greater, more powerful version of himself, Frank! appears to show a more dominant version of what actually sits in front of our eyes. In this case, from the outset there is no disguise. Different versions sit side by side in an act of constant transformation.
At Frank!’s heart are questions around the potentiality of being. Even the press release doesn’t appear like a press release and considers the slippage between exhibition and action, the art presented as a body of work or a corpse of some kind.
Everything within the exhibition is representing something that isn’t here, yet each representation is also presenting something that is yet to be represented, something that is yet to have form.
Frank! as its title is suggestive of many things. Frank, in that it is suggesting its sincerity. Frank, in the cadaver that the artworks form when they’re combined. Or Frank, as a direct reference to Robert Frank whose work features within the exhibition.
After a period of time I leave the gallery and out of the corner of my eye, I notice that the once white walls of the building next door have now turned blue from the fluorescent lights in the gallery. Perhaps it is most impressive that, even for a short moment, the exhibition appears to have transformed me.
