And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
(Seamus Heaney, “Postscript,” from The Spirit Level, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.)
DC Moore Gallery is pleased to present Mary Frank: As If for the First Time. Featuring new paintings, collages, and sculpture, and previously unseen drawings, this exhibition focuses on recurrence, discovery, and Frank’s regenerative mining of her own archive. This selection of work explores the evolution and throughlines of Mary Frank’s distinctive visual language. In her latest works, Frank recombines fragments of previous pieces, both materially and conceptually, remixing time and mediums to present a world familiar yet ever mysterious.
Charcoal drawings from 1959, the earliest works included in the exhibition, depict monumental women reclined in serpentine positions on vast horizon lines. These figure drawings were inspired by memories of sketches done on the beach over many summers in Cape Cod. Frank would dig herself a place in the sand so that she was at eye level to the water, creating a forced perspective where figures close to her would appear immense. Exploring the transformation of the figure in space, these drawings shed new light on Frank’s acclaimed wood and clay sculptures of abstracted female forms from the 1960s and 70s.
Frank’s approach to the human body is also deeply informed by her time as a dancer. In the late 1940s, she took classes with Martha Graham, an influence that can be seen in Frank’s sense of rhythm and movement. Frank attributes to Graham her interest in the architecture of the body, its ability to create lines, columns, and walls, as well as the power of gesture. Across the collages and paintings, hands reach outwards in gestures of offering or questioning.
Her new collages suggest a relationship to performance, with brightly colored silhouettes posed on black velvet paper. Using electric, complimentary color combinations, Frank creates dynamic contrasts and harmonies. She describes these pairings as “colors that fight but are also forgiving of each other.” The silhouetted figures in the collages are in fact stencils which Frank used repeatedly to make monoprints over many years, reassembled into new forms. The paper shows the traces of these past lives, with layers of paint and ink creating unique patinas.
Frank’s new collages and sculptures recall ancient Greek vase paintings in their mythical imagery and compositional contrast between power and delicacy. The ceramic sculpture groups are composed of individual figures that Frank created in the 1980s, used in her photography practice, and now have been given a third life. Human, plant, and animal forms are metamorphosed into new beings that appear timeless yet everchanging.
