WEAVING ABSTRACTION and figuration with elements of decoration, Frank makes her West Coast debut with nearly two dozen new paintings and works on paper that push her allegorical art into deeper psychological realms. Utilizing tales of the magic realists as her point of departure, Frank collages elements of her previous works together with gestural marks and realistic renditions of bits of life to express a new, haunting view of humanity.
The largest painting, Portrait in Interior with Window, 2013, shows a rotund nude woman reclining on a daybed in a room cluttered with furniture, including a rug depicting colorful birds in flight. The grotesque odalisque is observed by an equally freaky figure in the shadows. The bizarre picture brings to mind the jarring juxtapositions of reality and fiction found in the installations of Ed Kienholz, a West Coast icon.
Frank accentuates her smaller paintings on board with a witty array of handmade frames. The oddly shaped Portrait in the Landscape, 2013, depicts a half-man, half-beast in profile; with an opening in the lower right corner, its surrounding wood frame makes the piece reminiscent of a pinball machine. A hinged gate on the frame of Screen Door, 2013, reveals an animalistic couple.
Interspersed throughout the show, a series of recent drawings created as stand-alone works reveal the artist’s diverse sources of inspiration – from Edouard Vuillard and Francis Bacon to the radical members of the COBRA movement and the quirky Llyn Foulkes – with painterly panache.
– Paul Laster
Resource : http://www.natalie-frank.com/press/modernpainters_jan14.html
Pratt Institute Intensive English Program 