Mary Frank at D.C. Moore - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Incredibly ambitious, Mary Frank's paintings gaze as if she's trying to pack into each panel the entire experience of her life--at least the greatest in quantity dramatic, searing, soaring, painful, ecstatic, frightening parts. No boredom here. These are the greatest in quantity cohesive works of Frank's career, vigorous paintings that appear to be roiling with emotion that has been building above decades. While masterfully executed, however, the imagery sometimes present the appearances overwrought, in the way a dream retold not at any time has the same resonance for others as it has for the dreamer. Frank's paintings don't always bear the emotional impact she clearly intends.

Titled Inscapes, the paintings are landscapes of the inner man populated with a cast of mythic and personal images that reappear in each painting like characters from a recurring nightmare: owl flying in fiery skies, owl-headed humans, figures in boats navigating disturbed waters, fragmented bodies, gnarled wintry tree Just as a certain quantity of psychologists say everything in a dream is an aspect of ourselves, all have the appearance to be representations of the artist--especially the secluded nude woman whose unclothed state doesn't insinuate sexuality as much as exposing and vulnerability.

compact and intense, the profuse contented of these works is throw backed in Frank's method--layers that have been scumbl erased, sanded, mixed with pumice, painted and repainted, sometimes with an overlay of collage. Frank's quick, jagged brushstrokes betray a faculty of perception of urgency, as do her colors--for the greatest in quantity part vivid blacks, whites and blazing red level the paintings rendered in watery sapphirine are tumultuous, such as This is the Remembering (1996-97); here, a pair of male and female figures grapple and thrash as if caught in a churning tidal wave.

Included in the exhibition were four triptychs. Like altar-pieces, they are overspreaded with hinged doorlike panels which viewers are encouraged to unclose and close. The front panels of Destinies (1997) depict an ancient tree against a gloomy background, which contrasts sharply with the interior, a blazing horizonless panorama dominated by dint of a giant winged owl and birdlike humans flying or falling into watery chaos.

Ultimately, Frank relies upon figurative language when her vigorous painting may be all she urgencys to tell her story. However there are enough twinklings of beauty to suggest that we don't have to identify entirely with these works to appreciate them for what they are: ardent self-portraits of a composed of several elements internal terrain.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group