Mary Frank
Mary Frank Pilgrimage: Photographs and Recent Sculpture
DC Moore Gallery
New York, 535 West 22nd Street, 2nd Floor
This exhibition will include 60 recent photographs and a premier presentation of Mary Frank’s recent sculptural constructions of stone and paint. The exhibition will coincide with the publication, Pilgrimage: Photographs of Mary Frank (Eakins Press Foundation) with texts by the poet and critic John Yau, and the environmental activist and author, Terry Tempest Williams.
This exhibition presents, for the first time, a broad selection of the composed photographs that have been Frank’s creative focus for the last ten years. Frank taps into the creative potential of elemental objects using collage, painting, sculpture and drawing. With assemblages of stone, charred wood, ice, fire, flowers and branches she creates, then photographs, mythic, rugged worlds where silhouetted, archetypal figures interact with each other and their often harsh environments. She frames these mysterious spaces through photography resulting in images that defy categorization and bring us into compelling worlds filled with ambiguity and urgency.
Mary Frank, Untitled 2014-17 Archival pigment print on bamboo paper 16 x 21-1/4 inches (horizontal) or 21-1/4 x 16 inches (vertical) edition of 9 Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York
Intertwined throughout Frank’s photography and recent sculpture, is a raw political cry and objection to the inhumane struggles thrust on people to survive. Mary is compelled by the knowledge and images of war, destruction and displacement. As the artist states: “I want to make work that looks back at the viewer.” She presents migration floods and global change in the hope that we can recognize these devastating struggles and work toward change. For over twenty-seven years Frank has worked with Solar Cookers International, which provides a practical cooking and water pasteurization alternative to people who live in extreme poverty.
Mary Frank’s art work presents a remarkable journey in life and art with an unrelenting pursuit of honest and direct expression. For sixty years the artist has been creating deeply personal works across various forms of media that reveal her experience and interpretation of human life and struggle. Frank has said:
““Creatures, spaces, things, thoughts accrue and disappear in the studio. I say come in. They teach, shock, disturb, and thrill me. The chaos becomes this work.””
On view through December 22, 2017
